A Picture Book a Day for a Year: Day 115

Picture Book: Beautiful Oops!

Author & Illustrator: Barney Saltzberg

Summary: Mistakes are celebrated in this interactive book full of folds, stains, holes, tears, tabs, drips, and even a paper wad. This picture book’s ingenious design has readers helping to transform the various mistakes into fun possibilities. The first pages declare that an “oops” (mistake) is just the beginning. Then we are encouraged to help the author find the potential in all sorts of oops, demonstrating that oops can be seen as wonderful opportunities.

Hanna’s Comments: Underneath the fun of this book are messages of grace, self-forgiveness, and hope. Although here the idea of transforming our mistakes is delivered with a clever and light tone, between the lines is encouragement to accept that our mistakes are inevitable and fun to alter. How we respond to our mistakes is what counts.

Publisher & Date of Publication:  Workman, 2010

Age & Grade Appropriateness: 3 and up, Pre and up

# of Pages: 28

Available in Spanish? Not at present

Formats other than Book: Youtube.com has a video of the author demonstrating the art concepts underlying the book which is mentioned but not read. There are also amateur readings of the book on Youtube.com.

PBT Category: Post 2K

PBT Topics this Book Connects with: acceptance, adaptation/assimilation, art, beauty, brokenness, challenges, change, creativity/imagination/ingenuity, God’s nature, grace, guilt, hope, mistakes, play, sin, transformation

Scripture Connections and Idea(s) for Application: Grace is such a multifaceted and abstract concept. It’s hard for adults to comprehend, much less children. My church’s annual summer arts camp for children just ended. This year’s curriculum, written by my amazing husband Bill, was inspired by this wonderful book. He was able to connect 4 Bible Stories with 4 of this book’s categories of oops and then tell each story’s message of grace. Here they are: Joseph in the pit (hole), the Demoniac on the rocks (torn), the Prodigal Son with the pigs (stained), and Jesus’ tears of blood in the Garden (drip). Contact me if you are interested in hearing more about this curriculum. The kids loved it!