A beautiful book of prayers for children that is challenging and accessible

I remember a conversation over dinner in Rome, which turned to the subject of teaching children to pray. It was a convivial evening, and the better part of two decades ago, so my recollection is—shall we say?—fuzzy.

The gist of it was that some young parents were at some pains to make sure they imparted proper technique and instilled diligence in their little ones. The father of only one small boy at the time, I felt myself uniquely unqualified to offer anything in the way of advice. I still feel that way, in the main, about anything to do with the spiritual life and especially with child rearing.

Still, I felt bound by manners, if nothing else, to offer something.

If memory serves, I said something about worrying less about posture and precise recall and the like, and more about making it an occasion for merriment (eutrapelia in the Aristotelian sense appropriated by St. Thomas Aquinas).

If A Very Little Office of Compline: Night Prayer for Children had been available, I would have merely described it and let the volume recommend itself and left it at that.

Written by B.G. ‘Odo’ Bonner Obl. OSB and illustrated by Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs, A Very Little Office recognizes how prayer—before it is anything else—is a privileged space for delight with the Lord.

The prayers themselves are composed in rhyme and are challenging but not daunting. They will stretch the mind and the vocabulary, while also fostering a sense of easy intimacy and good old fun. Take, for example, the second stanza of one hymn:

From nightmares and their fear
defend mind, eye, and ear
tread underfoot the fiend
and keep our conscience clean

The prayers, in short, are not saccharine, they do not shy from hard things—children know when they are being had—but they express the spirit of adventure, which nourishes faith and sustains us while we are about the often-muddling business of pilgrimage in the world.

Reading this book, and delighting in Thompson-Briggs’ exquisite watercolor illustrations, which are an integral part of the experience, one is reminded of Chesterton’s keen observation: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

At once challenging and accessible, A Very Little Office is indeed an introduction “to the beauty and depth” of the Church’s ceaseless praise of God in every hour.

Parents of very small children will read this book to their little ones, and those little ones will read it as they grow.

The authors of this book know two things.

The first is that children will outgrow this book, and the second is that the children who delight in it when they are small will eventually be old enough to delight in it again.

This is the mark of any successful literary and devotional endeavor in the vein this book taps.

Parents will want to get A Very Little Office for their small children; older children will want to read it to and for their younger siblings; aunts and uncles and grandparents will be glad to have it to hand.

A Very Little Office of Compline: Night Prayer for Children
By B.G. ‘Odo’ Bonner
TAN Books, 2025
Hardcover, 40 pages

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