You Are Special by Max Lucado

I became an owner of this book during my DTS with YWAM.  Max Lucado wrote it for kids. Our DTS leader would read this to large crowds of teenagers in our audience.  I would cry every time and there would always be books purchased from our merchandise table after the shows.

Now I am a mommy and Bradie requests I read it to her occasionally.  Maybe we should read it everyday, because I still cry, and it might lessen the blow.

For those of you who have read this book it's the line:

"She has decided that what I think is more important than what they think.  

The stickers only stick if you let them."

The simple tenderness that Eli, the woodcarver/creator, speaks to Punchinello, one of his little wooden people, hits my heart as truth every time.   I am Punchinello and I get so turned around in our world that I forget of God's love and passionate sacrifice for me.

Less tender but equally thought-provoking, is an image a few pages earlier.  It shows a group of wooden people busily giving one another stickers- star stickers and gray dot stickers- as seals of approval or disapproval. 

Down in the corner, the illustration darkens a bit and you see a wooden man in a dark suit.  He carries a box of gray dots only and bears no stickers himself.  Curious isn't he?  The lion that waits to devour also carries a box of simple discouragement.  I can't tell you how real and helpful the imagery is in this little kids book.  Find a Christian book store and buy it for Christmas, or at least read it.