A Family Prayer

Maria Riley reviews Shay Youngblood’s beautiful picture book that encourages children to pray.

A Family Prayer follows the evening prayer of a young girl as she remembers to pray for everyone in her family. Her prayers of blessing do not end with her biological family members, though, and she prays for her godparents, babysitters, and even pets.

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Inspired by her own nighttime prayers for everyone she loved, even those who weren’t family by blood, A Family Prayer is Youngblood’s homage to her faith and childhood. Her book beautifully demonstrates the universality of prayer and blessings.

Youngblood explains in her Author’s Note that her birth mom died when she was three. She was raised by loving, faithful older women from her community. Youngblood’s faith was an integral part of her life and her community, and she learned that family means more than being biologically related to someone.

Each page features a colorful, full-page illustration of the person being prayed for, drawing little eyes into the love from each relationship on the page. A Family Prayer is poetical though not restrained by rhyme, and it feels like reading a prayer with your child. The repetitive syntax lends to a soothing cadence as the book is read aloud.

When I read the book with my youngest, she wanted to take turns reading pages. She quickly recognized the patterns and read along well. Her favorite part, though, was seeing a girl who looks like her on the page.

My youngest is adopted, and we don’t always see black families represented in the Christian children’s books we read. A Family Prayer is a beautiful addition to our library and my daughter loves it.

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Though A Family Prayer is not explicitly Catholic, all families would enjoy reading this prayerful book at bedtime. Through a Catholic lens, my only reservation is that Youngblood describes godparents as “chosen for their kindness and their love for my family.” The true role of godparents, of course, is to be “firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized — child or adult — on the road of Christian life” (CCC 1255).

There is also a strange absence of the name of God in any form. Each page starts, “Mothers (Fathers, Cousins, etc) are a blessing, keep them safe from harm.” The prayer feature is implied since we never see the names Lord, Father, or Jesus, nor the word "Amen" at the end. Even without those explicitly religious terms, A Family Prayer is a lovely picture book my family enjoys reading together.

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