"One Hand, Two Hands" by Max Lucado (Children's Book review)

"One Hand, Two Hands" by Max Lucado (Children's Book review)


From Amazon.com: "Written in rhyming text and illustrated with the charming art of Gaby Hansen, this simple message of God's blessing of hands not only entertains . . . as it teaches what wonderful things our hands can do from scratching, latching, and petting a pup to washing dishes with mommy and putting toys in a box . . . but it also conveys the important message: We can use God's gift of hands to show our love for Him by helping others. The book ends tenderly with a prayer of thanks to God for hands and asks Him to use them again:

One hand, two hands,
Five fingers, ten.
God, thanks, for my hands.
Please, use them again."

My Review:
A very simple cute book for the little ones. Pros are that it has adorable illustrations that my kids loved, and enforces the idea that our hands are for doing good things. Cons are that the book really only mentions God at the end there as quoted in the Amazon writeup and the book is a bit long for the attention spans of the intellectual level that would get the most out of the simple rhyming text. I think that my almost 4 year old will after a few readings begin to grasp that the book is saying we should use our hands to do good and kind things, without further explanation. She might need help connecting the one mention of God using our hands to the reason why we do good things with them, simply because God is so obscure in the book. But then again maybe not... kids pick up on things sometimes that we wouldn't think they would. My 2 year old however will probably not grasp this concept right away even with further explanation. I will have to own this book longer, I think, to be able to see what their little minds do with it. :) And every child is different so perhaps what is not immediately obvious to my tots will be to yours, or vice versa.
Over all a good sweet simple book. I enjoy reading it with my littles. I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars - not 5 simply because I'd like God to be a little more obvious in the text but other than that it's great!