For the 10+ years I was a single adult, I volunteered a lot with youth groups. No matter how good or bad the program, the same question seemed to plague each leader. Why is it that a child can be raised in the church and leave when they are old enough to leave? Their parents bring them every Sunday. They participate in all the same ways others do, and yet when they are adults, many of them see no more significance in the church than anything else in their life. They are certainly not willing to sacrifice other parts of their lives to attend. Sometimes they come back when they have children of their own, and sometimes they do not. Still, I didn’t want that for my children. I went out looking for Orthodox children’s material. I had a checklist and the Internet, and I was determined to find the best available to teach the faith to my children in a way that would bring the significance of Christ and the church to their lives.

I spent several days on the Internet keeping a list of the books available, and it quickly became apparent to me that Orthodox children’s books in English is a genre that is lacking. In fact, you could fill a shelf about a yard long and that would be all the books you can find. That’s not very many, considering a trip to any Christian bookstore could yield rooms full of other non-Orthodox books.

Although I have no complaints against the Orthodox books I found, they just didn’t seem to present any sort of cohesive whole. So I thought, why can’t I just write what I want for my children? I also had an artist friend who had, for the previous year, been trying to find some way for his art to benefit the church. He’s not an iconographer, so there was no obvious way for him to contribute. Since my art is pretty much reduced to stick figures, I would need his help. Before we knew it, we had 6 books written.

I decided if I’m going to do this, then I might as well do it for all children, not just my own. They will have to find spouses and raise children of their own, so they will need books, too. Somehow I missed the fact that this would make me not only a writer but a publisher as well. So with my original checklist in mind, we are writing books to fill this massive gap.

1. Must contain an Orthodox narrative

One thing that has always struck me is that there are children, converts and cradle alike, who get to their teen years and don’t know even the most basic of Bible stories or lives of the saints. If a person is going to connect to the church, then it’s important for them to find their place in the story of it. For the most part, my English-speaking friends are drawing on a very small number of Orthodox books, and for the rest, they are depending on Protestant or Roman Catholic materials. This is okay in a pinch, but I wanted something that I wouldn’t have to correct later. I also found that for the most part, only the Bible was covered in a very literal sense. There was not much for extra-Biblical narratives, such as lives of the saints or the early life of St. John the forerunner.

2. Must expose children to icons as a method for story telling

Children are the most likely candidates for the veneration and use of icons. This is particularly the case because they do not read. So a method of telling a story using pictures is wonderful for them. I wanted books that having read them a number of times, my children would be able to look at an icon and tell the basic narrative with just the icon in front of them.

3. I wanted the books to contain explainations of the feasts, various services, and celebrations in the church.

It occurred to me that in order for the services of the church to be meaningful at all, a person would have to understand what the songs mean. For instance, when we are referring to the Theotokos, a child might not even understand that word. Hearing it multiple times doesn’t necessarily bring understanding.

4. I wanted them to be theologically correct.

Many of the materials used for non-Orthodox Christian children are not really in keeping with what the Orthodox Church teaches. I didn’t want my children to get the idea that all of these different theologies are just competing opinions and that none of them is absolutely true. The danger in this is that if exposed to competing theologies on equal footing with the truth, a child could eventually come to the conclusion that the truth can’t be known. If many groups of Christians think so many different things, then perhaps it doesn’t matter what church one goes to, or perhaps it doesn’t even matter what religion. I wanted my children to be able to differentiate between true and false.

5. I wanted the books to be small enough for a child to handle comfortably.

I grew up with Arch Books, which the Lutherans produced. They were easy for me to use, and for that reason, I read them over and over again without adult help. The pictures were appealing, and I’m sure that’s why I know a lot of Bible stories.

6. Having grown up with a series of books, I wanted a series of books for my children as well.

I really was looking for the Orthodox equivalent to Arch Books.

Being the control freak that I am, I wanted complete control of the project. I didn’t want to get into others owning the rights to our work, etc. So the next logical outcome was to self-publish; however, the various agreements left a lot to be desired, so I decided to start a publishing company for Orthodox children’s books. Maybe there are other people who want to write Orthodox books for children; perhaps a decent publisher is the reason for the oversight. Maybe other publishers are not willing to take the risk from a business perspective.

I chose St. Stylianos Books as the name because St. Stylianos is credited with caring very deeply for the spiritual care of children and during his life took to educating them. Their mothers often left children with him, and it’s said that he was rarely seen with a child following him around.

The first book to be published and printed was The Nativity of Christ. Next began the battle to make these books available to others. The only problem is that the printer’s costs were very prohibitive, and we’ve finally come around to a solution to that problem which does not involve printing in China. In a matter of days, Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker will be in print, and I will have become not only a writer but a publisher as well.

I have this dream that one day in the future, my living room will contain a book case with 300 or so small 24-page books, and contained in those books will be everything necessary for parents to teach their children in a way that transforms them. Right now, there is one book, but that book is loved. It has applesauce on it from Aidan and the corner chewed off from Evangeline. My daughter has heard it so much that she can tell the story to her brother without being able to read. The pictures are mesmerizing to them, and they pull it off the shelf over and over again. In my dream, I hope that their imaginations will have made them realize these books are real. For Zenaida, I already see that happening. In the Nativity book, Jesus is taken to Egypt to be kept safe, so when the uprising in Egypt happened and she heard the word Egypt on the news, her first reaction was confusion. She said, "Wait. Egypt is in your book. Is the book real? I thought Egypt was a safe place?" I had a lot of explaining to do… and she actually wanted to listen. I have a dream that she’ll know the whole history of the church and feel herself so much a part of it that it won’t even enter her head that there is any other possibility for her future than to be an Orthodox Christian. It will simply be who she has always been and every other option will seem lacking by comparison.

I don’t view myself as a writer so much as a teacher. Writing is just the medium I need to use because I want children growing up in the church to have a fighting chance of knowing who they are. How can they if parents don’t have tools? I cannot think of a better tool for a child than a picture book. They don’t have a lot of words; however, the combination of words and pictures convey concepts in a way children love. I hope other people want to write Orthodox children’s books, too. If they do, I want to publish them.

Lily Parascheva Rowe ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) is the founder of St. Stylianos Books, a publishing company for Orthodox Christian children’s books. She is the author of The Nativity of Christ. Lily lives in Maryland with her husband Christopher and their three children. Together they attend Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church in Linthicum, MD.