“That perpetual weary turning back to the past for refuge that we are all more or less guilty of these days is not the natural reaction to the challenge… we are urged creatively forward to an ending that is for each of us altogether good.”

Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge

When I was a child, I habitually turned for comfort to the “Little House” book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Whatever domestic chaos or crisis might engulf my own family, the resoluteness of the Ingalls family in their pioneer adventures gave me something solid on which to ground my own hopes.

One scene suffices to illustrate what I mean:

On a star-strewn night in “Little House on the Prairie,” Laura regards a wolf pack which has surrounded her family’s doorless, window-pane-less cabin. She notices the tremendous size of the buffalo wolves, the glint of moonlight on their teeth, and even comments on the beauty of their fur as it is ruffled by the prairie wind. Despite the family’s relatively defenseless isolation, she is not afraid. Indeed, she eventually goes back to bed and falls asleep, wholly secure because Pa and Jack, the bulldog, are watching over her.

Garth Williams’ illustration of the Wolf Pack:

Laura’s profound peace in the face of terrible danger soothed my anxieties throughout a childhood and adolescence in which the wolves at the door were figurative – but as lethal as those in the story. Laura’s calm was contagious. I craved it the way I crave scripture, now.

More recently, re-reading those books to my own children, I realized the extent to which my faith in God had begun in my repetitive witnessing of the Ingalls’ faith in God. “Prevenient grace,” Methodists call that phenomenon… grace which precedes belief but prepares the heart to receive what has already been given by God.

The older I get, and the more children to whom I get to read, the more I understand that the literature of childhood earns “classic” status mostly based on whether it is a conduit of prevenient grace. C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” demonstrate that axiom. Kenneth Graeme’s “The Wind in the Willows,” L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” series, “The Secret Garden,” “Little Women” – the whole canon of “classic” children’s books are “good” books in large part because they are about goodness itself. Goodness persisting in the face of wickedness (“Oliver Twist”). Goodness triumphing over tragedy (“Across Five Aprils”). Goodness forgiving even the unforgivable (“The Winged Watchman”). I am convinced that the “Harry Potter” series will earn “classic” status because at its heart it is the story of goodness combatting evil – sacrificing greatly in the battle – and triumphing. 

Something I didn’t know when I was younger: The un-named protagonist in every good story is Jesus, because Jesus is both the source and template of goodness. Jesus enables good stories both as the ultimate good storyteller (review his parables in the gospels of Matthew and Luke if you don’t believe me) and also as the central figure in the larger story which is life itself. In Jesus’s story, all the elements of every good story line up in a perfection of symmetry that other literature can only imitate: suffering, courage, justice, love, friendship, betrayal, sacrifice, healing, hope, danger, redemption… only in Jesus’s story are they all written in their purest, most potent form.

Good stories, at their best, offer new angles on the truth and beauty of Jesus’s story, much like Jesus utilized storytelling to offer new angles on the truth and beauty of the Kingdom of God. (Jesus started multiple, diverse parables with the introductory phrase, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” Those words serve a gospel-purpose akin to the fairy-tale purpose of, “Once upon a time, in a faraway land…” It alerts the listener: something wonderful is coming. Pay attention!)

Though I am decades away from little-girl status, I’ve had a deep craving of late for the kind of literary comfort “Little House” used to give me. My heart is heavy, my nerve endings are jangled, and I long for an image of safety and shelter that will apply as soothingly to my adult anxiety as Laura’s serenity in the face of the wolf pack did my childhood traumas. Of course, scripture is the ultimate balm – of course it is! But a lifelong bibliophile sometimes just needs a good book with which to unwind at the end of the day.

So, I offer the following compilation to those who, like me, are grown up people earnestly wishing for a good bedtime story. A story that is “good” because it concerns goodness and is a means of grace. A story that is “good” because it is well written enough to transport the reader into an alternative world. A story that is good for bedtime in that it is suitable for bringing a beleaguered brain to a place of restfulness.

Keats had such good in mind, I think, when he wrote in Endymion,

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing…”

Enjoy… and sweet dreams, all.

The Dean’s Watch, by Elizabeth Goudge

A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman

Shadows on the Rock, by Willa Cather

Middlemarch, by George Elliot