The Book of Mormon Storybook for Little Saints: Introduction

Genesis 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

We started this journey shortly after becoming new parents to a beautiful little boy named Clarence. We want Clarence to love scripture stories, not simply because they are scriptural, but because they are beautiful stories with profoundly human characters who are struggling to do and be good in a complex world. We want Clarence to know he is a good boy capable of doing good things. We also want him to know that other people are good and loved, even when they are mean and even when they do bad things. We hope that these stories will teach him that.

We have tried very hard to make each story impactful, and so we’ve relied on Nephi’s admonition to liken the scriptures unto ourselves. One example is the addition of playful anachronism. Amulek is drinking chocolate milk when he sees Alma. Captain Moroni uses the postal service to deliver a message to Pahoran. These are not modern adaptations. Rather, we have written some of our modern world into these old stories. It is a little like decorating a Christmas tree: we have hung trinkets from our own lives onto its branches. More than anything, we have hung our own hearts, our own love, and our own testimony of God.

Our testimony has become our guiding star as we’ve made editorial decisions. For anyone trying to tell Book of Mormon stories to children, altering the text is unavoidable. A storyteller must often decide between focusing on specific details or communicating the essence. With that in mind, the primary goal of this book is not to teach children a summary of events. Instead, we have focused on the artful re-telling of the stories themselves. And each story is driven by testimony — our testimony — which we have condensed into this single sentence: These are stories about a real God who loves real people.

The greatest advantage and disadvantage of treating these characters as real people — familiar people with eternal souls — is that it makes the happy moments very happy and the sad moments very sad. And because The Book of Mormon ends in tragedy, we have found ourselves relying on the mercies and kindnesses of Jesus Christ and Heavenly Parents who always seem to respond to sin with even more grace. This is how they responded in the beginning with Adam and Eve, and this is how they respond to each of us.

We hope this approach will help Clarence to see and learn the goodness and grace and givenness of all the world around him. And maybe, it will help you and your littles to sense that too.

This book is called The Book of Mormon. Well, not really. It’s stories from The Book of Mormon that have been written for little saints like you. All the stories in this book are from that other, older, longer, beautiful-er book called The Book of Mormon. You will read it someday, and you will see for yourself how great it is. But for now, we are glad you are here with us, in this storybook.

The stories in the Book of Mormon are very old and very many. We will tell you about Lehi and Sariah, Mormon and Moroni, Alma and Alma, and a lot of people named Nephi. Like you, the people in these stories were imperfect. They made mistakes. Small mistakes, big mistakes, all kinds of mistakes. They were grumpy sometimes, and mean sometimes, and bad sometimes. But mostly, the people in these stories tried to be good. They failed a lot. All the time, actually. Over and over again. Because, like you, these people needed help.

Which brings us to another person in these stories. In every story, there are four people named God. They are not the same person, but they share the same name. Sometimes God is Heavenly Father, sometimes God is Heavenly Mother, sometimes God is Jesus Christ, sometimes God is the Holy Ghost, and often God is all four of them together.

They share the same name because it’s just too hard to separate one from another because they do the same work. And the work they do is love. And love is hard work. And God loved the people in the Book of Mormon. When they were good, God smiled. When they cried, God cried. When they danced, God laughed. And when they were bad, God did not give up.

That’s what all these stories are about. They are about a real God who loves real people even though they fail over and over again. When they fall flat on their faces, when they do bad things and want to give up and just be bad, God is there helping them back onto their feet, reminding them again that they are God’s. And because they are God’s, they are good.

Joshua is an award-winning writer and director. His recent book, Ali the Iraqi, was published by BCC press. Sarah is a literature and theology doctoral student studying the Book of Job in the twentieth century.

Artwork by Maddie Baker.