The Story of Easter

The Story of Easter
Aileen Fisher & Stephano Vitale
HarperTrophy, 1997

While I love, and will probably always gravitate towards, books that invite us into the experience of the Passion and Easter (Peter’s First Easter and At Jersualem’s Gate, I’m looking at you), I also have a seven-year-old who is hungry for information. This child falls asleep at night reading her science dictionary, and asked me yesterday on the way home from a playdate how the Romans stopped killing Christians and became Christians themselves. She likes to know why and how things happen: why are there so many eggs at Easter? What does a bunny have to do with it anyway? Bunnies don’t lay eggs, do they? Snakes do: hey, how long is an anaconda? Does an anaconda eat bunnies?

Sometimes you just need a good reference, right?

If you’re looking for just such a book for a similarly inquisitive child, or perhaps for a child who isn’t familiar with the holiday beyond the version you can buy at Target (as is the case for many of my daughter’s friends), The Story of Easter, by Aileen Fisher, is just the thing to tuck in their baskets.

This book does a lovely job explaining the history of Easter itself, beginning with the life of Jesus and the events of Holy Week. The pastel illustrations in this section of the book echo Renaissance frescoes, with color, light, and activity to draw us in. The second half of the book is devoted to illustrating how parts of ancient spring festivals were drawn into Easter celebrations as the good news of Jesus’ resurrection spread beyond the Jewish world. Easter eggs, the bunny, wearing new clothes on Easter: they’re all there. Fisher tells in simple, direct language the origins of each custom and how it complements and was taken up into the Christian celebration. It’s all very winsomely, gently written, and I especially appreciated that it gives my daughter a point of connection with the (sometimes-derided-as-“pagan”) pieces of Easter that are all her friends know.

And full of fun facts, which is just the thing for her right now! For instance: did you know that wearing something new on Easter can be traced back to the white baptismal clothes that early Christians received on their entry into the church (often on Easter)? But it all comes back to the sole reason for the holiday at all: “It is the joy and celebration of the belief that God’s love is stronger than death.”