Try to teach a child the story of Noah and one quickly faces a conundrum: how much focus to give God’s mass, watery slaughter of all but the biblical prophet’s family? Or, when telling the story of Exodus, how to explain the death of the Egyptians’ firstborns — a cohort that would have included infants and children?
These are the questions Josh Sabey and Sarah Perkins Sabey have sought to answer through their series, “The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament,” a retelling of the Hebrew Bible for children and young adults.
The husband and wife, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have no real theological training beyond countless Sunday school classes and religious education courses at church-owned Brigham Young University, where both received their undergraduate degrees.
(Sarah Perkins Sabey) Josh Sabey and Sarah Perkins Sabey are filmmakers and co-authors of Bible and Book of Mormon storybooks for children.
What they do have is a love for story (Sarah has her doctorate in literature from Brandeis University) and three small children to whom they wanted to pass on their love of scripture.
It was during Sunday nap time that the duo, both filmmakers, started writing. Today, their company, “For Little Saints,” offers five titles — two installments on the Old Testament, two on their faith’s foundational scripture, the Book of Mormon, and a picture book billed as “theodicy for babies.” They’re currently working on retellings of the New Testament.
The Idaho couple spoke with The Salt Lake Tribune about their approach to teaching the Old Testament — the focus of study this year for Latter-day Saints around the world — as well as scripture generally to kids. The following has been edited for length and clarity:
When did you first start writing scripture stories for children and why?
Sarah • Many years ago, we just had a new little baby, and I was interested in the possibility of writing children’s stories from the Book of Mormon that were gentle and really heartfelt and tender, but that also grappled with its deep tensions and ambiguities. I wrote a little paragraph about Laman and Lemuel and Josh was like, “We should do this.”
What has been the response?
Josh • Really positive, including from church-owned Deseret Book, which will soon be selling the books in addition to two others we wrote — "The Story of the Atonement" and "Tales from the Book of Mormon" — that are already for sell on their site.
What was the experience of retelling the Old Testament like versus the Book of Mormon?
(Sarah Perkins Sabey) Illustration for "The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament" by artist Maddie Baker depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Sarah • The Book of Mormon is nice because it’s really structured. There’s a narrator and a clear plot and timeline. The Old Testament is just a lot less neat in that sense. We wanted to tell it chronologically. We were telling a story, and we wanted a clear sense of how the various arcs connected. Untangling that felt a little tricky.
Josh • In both cases, it was a beautiful experience to try to find the stories and the arcs. Oftentimes you read for other reasons. But when you’re really trying to find the human stories and human characters, they’re there, and they’re really beautiful.
Is there one story in particular you found moving?
Sarah • The story of Elisha and the Syrians is a pretty famous story. The Syrian army is coming, and Elisha’s servant freaks out. And the prophet is like, “Oh, don’t worry. They that be with us are more than be with them.” And they look out the window, and they see all the angels. And for many of us that’s where the story ends.
But it continues, and it’s not like the angels obliterate the army. The army is blinded. Elisha leads them into the middle of the capital city, and they close the gates behind them. And the king of Israel is like, “OK, so now do we kill them?” And Elisha is like, “No, you feed them.” And they prepare a feast of great provisions. And they feast together, these warring nations, these warring armies. And then it says that army went home and never attacked the kingdom of Israel again.
It’s just an incredible reversal of what I thought a story was. It’s not about the good guys totally pummeling the bad guys. It’s this incredible peacemaking story of people responding with kindness and humanity and midwifing more humanity and goodness into the world.
How do you handle some of the violence found in the Bible?
Josh • We try not to just ignore it. Oftentimes the approach with Noah, for example, is to focus on the animals and the ark like it’s a trip to the zoo and to ignore all the death occurring around them. And we try not to do that, because, again, it’s a human story, and these are humans who are annihilated. But we tried to find tender, beautiful stories, too. For instance, after all this devastation, Noah ends up getting drunk and becoming an embarrassment to his children. He seems traumatized. So we tried to humanize his character, too.
Sarah • We’re always trying to tell real stories about a real God who loves real people.
Did you ever disagree about how to tell a story, in the Old Testament or elsewhere?
(Sarah Perkins Sabey) Biblical matriarch Sarah holds her infant son, Isaac, in this illustration by Maddie Baker.
Sarah • Of course. I think we went through 12 drafts of the story of Noah.
Josh • We also have one story where the version in the book is different from the version in our audiobook because we couldn’t ever totally decide how to tell it.
Did you use the church’s manuals or other resources as guides?
Sarah • We were certainly using a lot of resources. I wouldn’t say we felt beholden to the manual or its signposting and questions.
Josh • The Book of Mormon is obviously a Mormon text. But the Bible stories are written for a general audience. We weren’t pulling from the Latter-day Saint book of scripture known as the Pearl of Great Price or offering Mormon apologetics. We were very much trying to just tell the stories the way they’re presented in the Bible.
Have you received much feedback from readers outside your faith?
Josh • Some, more from mixed-faith families where some of the members are Latter-day Saints and some aren’t.
Sarah • We’ve also heard families who say, “My kid left the church, and they won’t let me talk to their kids about LDS things. But they will let me talk to them about God, and this is perfect for that.” Or we’ve gotten feedback from people who want to share their faith with their neighbors and use our books for that as well.
Josh • There are some who take them to Sunday school and read them to their class.
Do you mean in Primary, the church’s program for children?
Josh • And adult Sunday school class. I know someone who taught an institute class for college-aged members of the church using one of the books. The books are like Pixar — written ostensibly for kids but in a way that an entire family can find meaningful.
Talk about the artwork. Who are the artists and how did you find them?
(Sarah Perkins Sabey) Maddie Baker's illustration of Genesis' Hagar, alone and pregnant in the wilderness, found in "The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament."
Sarah • In the beginning, the project started off as a blog post every single week. And while we were working on it as a blog, we had an artist who would create a little collage piece for each story every week. Her name is Lauren Blair. She eventually had to step away from the project but we wanted to honor her contributions and her work by continuing in the collage style.
That’s when we found Maddie Baker, who was doing really beautiful collage work for her undergraduate thesis. We asked her to do the Book of Mormon storybooks. She did beautiful work there. And then we kept her around for the Bible storybooks, but she wanted it to look and feel a little different. So we moved to a more painterly aesthetic, which I love.
Josh • The artwork is not cliche. It’s not sentimental, but it is sincere and powerful.
Have you ever received pushback for the way you interpret certain stories?
Sarah • Absolutely. These are stories about God that we’re talking about, right? So, of course, we’ve received pushback. We anticipated that.
Any advice for adults trying to tackle tough scripture stories with kids?
Sarah • When you’re talking about things that matter to kids, like religion and spirituality and these stories that carry so much weight with them, it’s just important to be real about your experience, about what you feel about them and what you’re not sure about. That’s a real gift that we can give our kids.
Also, let scripture surprise you. It’s true that there are some really violent, painful stories in the Old Testament. But there’s also so much to love. It has surprised and challenged me in productive and wonderful ways.
Josh • What we’ve learned doing this project is that kids care about stories. Often in family home evening or Sunday school, we talk briefly about the story and then focus on doctrinal principles we pull from it. We’ve sort of lost telling these beautiful, old, shared stories and passing them on as stories without all this baggage to make them important. Just tell the story.
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