Book report: 'Before Your Birth Day'

Samaritan Ministries member Teresa Krager has penned a joyful book for children to learn about the miracle of their pre-birth growth

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
Psalm 139:13-14

 Life begins at conception, but where can children learn about those precious months leading up to birth?

Before Your Birth Day, by Samaritan Ministries member Teresa Krager, answers such a need. Tracing the life of a child from a few weeks after conception to birth, this special book gives children a real sense of their own unique personhood as those created in God’s image from before birth.

Before Your Birth Day came about after Teresa learned her son and daughter-in-law were expecting their first child after a difficult road. Right away, Teresa followed the baby’s progress using pregnancy apps that provided detailed descriptions of the baby’s size, abilities, and development. And, in her own words, she “had to learn more.”

God had placed a desire on her heart “to share the science and truth about preborn babies,” to create a children’s book showing “how wonderfully our Creator God weaves together His precious children in the womb.”

“As a retired kindergarten and first-grade teacher, my motto is, ‘Dr. Seuss lives in my head, but Jesus lives in my heart,’ so my picture books are naturally born in lyrical rhyme,” Teresa says.

The colorful and vivid illustrations by Thalita Dol capture the awe-inspiring development of a preborn baby and the life circumstances around pregnancy and childbirth. And the book is endorsed by medical professionals, including OB-GYNs, including interesting scientific information such as when a baby’s heartbeat first appears, when hair and fingerprints and footprints are first observed, and how a preborn is able to see light through its mommy’s tummy in the third trimester.

With useful information in fun poetic verse, traced along a beautifully illustrated journey, this is an important book to have in any child’s library.

Greg Feulner is assistant editor of the Samaritan Ministries newsletter.