Book Angels and Cooperating with Grace

Here’s to being more aware of the grand entrances of grace into OUR LIVES.

By: Elizabeth harwell, perimeter school librarian and perimeter school parent

For a full year now, I’ve been working in the Elementary Library. Friday mornings are my favorite because, on Friday mornings, each kindergarten class comes to me in twenty minute bursts. And kindergartners are hilarious. They might shoot up their hand in the middle of storytime to deliver breaking news of their neighbor’s shoe being untied. They might ask me if I have a book on radioactive spiders so they’ll know what to do if they get bitten by one.

One Friday morning, two squealing girls laid down two identical Angelina Ballerina books on my desk. ”We are taking home the same book!” one of them cried. They both covered their mouth to catch the giggles.

A little boy with a brown, curly mullet swaggered up behind them. He slammed a World War II book down in front of me and said, “I’m more of a war guy, myself.”

After the children finish checking out books, they pull floor cushions around my reading chair where I read to them a story of my choosing. On the Friday before Christmas break, I brought Mitali Perkins’s picture book, Holy Night and Little Star.

Before the students arrived that morning, I displayed the book on the red velvet reading chair so that the chair acted as an easel and Holy Night and Little Star a piece of artwork. I like building some curiosity and anticipation before reading time, and this morning, I had some anticipation myself. I love this little book. I stood in front of it and marveled at its gorgeous cover.

But as I studied the cover of Mitali’s book, something interesting happened - something which later turned out to be quite mysterious. Suddenly, a thought came to me that was something like a prayer: “I’d like to read Mitali Perkins’s book Steeped in Stories.” This is a nonfiction book she has written for adults. I say the thought was something like a prayer because it was more like internal chatter rather than a fully-formed sentence; and more like a desire rather than something to add to my to-do list - it was in the category of: “Oooh, I’m feeling cold, I wish I had a jacket;” Or: “A crisp, cold apple would really hit the spot right now.” As thoughts are wont to do, this one landed only briefly and then flitted away.

Next in my morning routine was to retrieve the return box that sits under our through-the-wall return slot. I grabbed this box-on-wheels and rolled it over to my seat at the computer. I peered into the box to find just one book staring back at me: Steeped in Stories by Mitali Perkins.

Did you just gasp? You should have just gasped. If this doesn’t astonish you in the way that it really ought to astonish you, let me throw a few more facts into the pot:

1. This book did not even belong in the Elementary Library, where it was returned, but in the Middle School Library and

2. I wasn’t aware our school had this book in either library and

3. Steeped in Stories had not crossed my mind since I first heard about it on a podcast back in 2023. And now here I was, thinking it into existence.

This, of course, was a staggering moment for me. I don’t need to be convinced that there’s a God who designs my days or who hears my prayers. But I was in the middle of a chicken-or-the-egg situation: Did the Spirit of Jesus put that wish in my heart because the book was already in the box, or did He orchestrate the book to come through the slot because of my desire to read it? The truth is that I don’t really want to know. I love the mystery of it. I love thinking there was something like a Book Angel, operating outside of time, pushing it through the return slot and into my hands.

But the real wonder for me was this: Now I get to decide whether or not to cooperate with grace. My kindergartners do not get to decide what’s being read for story-time, no matter how much they bully me about Mo Willems. But I’m an adult. I get to choose what I read. Was I now going to read this book that had such a dramatic entrance into my life? (Well, yes, of course I’m going to read it; I think I would be a fool not to read it.) But it did make me wonder about how many less-staggering graces are offered to me daily that I choose not to correspond with.

“Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them,” Annie Dillard said in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “The least we can do is try to be there.”

Yes, the very least. Here’s to trying to be there in 2026. Here’s to being more aware of Book Angels and of the grand entrances of grace into my life. And here’s to being more aware of the subtle and small invitations, too. Here’s to taking the book … and to reading it.