Interview with Dr. Laura Alary, Children’s Book Author & Knox College Staff Member
Summary:
John Borthwick chats with theologian, storyteller, and children’s book author Laura Alary about her creative journey and unique approach to ministry. From her early days as a student at Knox College to her current role as Library Assistant and Coordinator of the Mackay Educational Resource Center, Laura shares how she combined her love of theology, storytelling, and childlike wonder to become a celebrated picture book author.
Laura discusses the power of picture books to nurture faith, spark curiosity, and foster intergenerational learning. She highlights how picture books can support worship, Christian education, and personal reflection. She also introduces her new book, "Rise: A Children's Guide to Eastertide", which explores the 50 days of Easter through themes of hope, resurrection, and fresh starts.
Laura’s journey reminds us that ministry isn’t limited to pulpits and pews. It’s a celebration of creativity, compassion, and connection — one story at a time.
Quotables:
I think good picture books leave space for wondering and for curiosity, like they don't tell us everything. They're kind of like parables in that sense. They make us work to try to figure out, what might this story be saying to me at this point in my life, or to us? And I think the older I get, the more I believe that curiosity is an essential spiritual practice. It keeps us playful, it keeps us open to new possibilities, and it also, I think, keeps us humble so we don't assume too quickly that we know what's going on. We understand what's true, what's false, what needs to happen. I heard in an interview one time with Pádraig Ó Tuama, and he was talking about the importance of being curious about other people, especially those you don't agree with, and genuinely asking, I wonder why this person believes what they do, or believes the way they do. I wonder, you know, what need that belief is meeting for them? I mean, you may never get an answer, but just asking the question helps counteract the tendency to like to leap to a quick judgment, and maybe it will lead to deeper understanding. So picture books are good for the soul. - Dr. Laura Alary
It's definitely a discipline. And it's interesting that you should mention preaching, because I frequently fall back on my background in preaching, and I have to give a shout out to Stephen Farris, preaching prof at Knox while we were there, and I remember him saying, “You need to be able to tell me in a sentence what your sermon is about, and if you can't do it, then you need to go back and fix it, because you don't know what it's about”. And I'm paraphrasing there, but that was the message of it. And I have to do that all the time with picture books. Yeah, you need to be crystal clear, because there's just, there's no fat like you just have to know. Every word you choose has to advance the story somehow. - Dr. Laura Alary
And I'm thinking especially of Peter, who is and it's funny, you know, when you look for children's books about Peter, there's not that many that cover this territory. He's so burdened by guilt and shame over his betrayal, his denial of Jesus. And I absolutely love the scene in the Gospel of John, where, you know he's on the beach with Jesus. Jesus has already fed him. Jesus has extended grace, but Peter's still he's still not quite there yet. And Jesus keeps asking him, Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And it's so powerful because it ends with Jesus putting trust in Peter again. He gives him another chance. And I think that kind of resurrection is easier for us to identify with. And then once we start to see that resurrection is perhaps bigger and broader than we thought, we begin to see it and the risen Christ in all sorts of places. - Dr. Laura Alary
I had lunch with my thesis advisor, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. And I was a little bit nervous, because if anybody has the right to say, hey, you wasted your education, it would probably be her. But she didn't say that at all. We got to the end, and she said, this work lights you up. She said, I feel joy in you that I didn't feel when you were doing your PhD. No kidding, yeah. And I think that, you know, when we think about call that, there's an element of that too. It's like, what effect is this? Is this work having, having on me as a person, and I do feel joy when I'm able to go. Create something and share it and feel that it's meaningful. - Dr. Laura Alary
About Dr. Laura Alary
Laura Alary is a writer and storyteller who delights in sharing stories that make us bigger on the inside. She is the author of many picture books, including All the Faces of Me, Sun in My Tummy, What Grew in Larry’s Garden and Rise: A Child’s Guide to Eastertide (part of the Circle of Wonder liturgical year series from Paraclete Press). Laura is a graduate of Dalhousie University (BA in Classics), Knox College (MDiv), and the University of St. Michael’s College (PhD in New Testament) and is currently on staff at Caven Library, Knox College where she curates the Picture Books in Ministry Collection. You can find her online at lauraalary.ca
Additional Resources:
More About Laura
Laura's Website - subscribe to her regular email:
Rise: A Child's Guide to Eastertide (official available January 14, 2025)
Caven Library
Caven Library at Knox College - where you will find more information on the McKay Educational Resource Centre (MERC) that Laura tends and Alumni Services.
Picture Books in Ministry (Caven Library)
Grow Webinars
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Join us online as we hear from special guests who are growing lively and creative ministries in a variety of settings.
Grow: A webinar series from the McKay Educational Resource Centre - Knox College, Canada
The Grow Webinars can also be found at Knox College's YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@KnoxCollegeCA/videos
Webinar with Hanna Brown Schock
Picture Book Theology by Hanna Brown Schock
picturebooktheology.com - A blog about making theological connections to secular picture books.
TVO's Teeny Tiny Stories - Skylar Hammond
Liz Gilbert's Big Magic - Liz Gilbert (a book on the Creative Practice)
Storytime Trail (Good with Words)
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Transcript
John Borthwick
Welcome to the Ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resource ministry leaders all across Canada as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel. I am your host, the Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Center and curator of all that is ministryforum.ca. I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all that, I get to share it all with all of you. So thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen. Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you. In Mind you Lauren, well, welcome. I'm delighted to have Dr [Laura Alary] as a guest on the Ministry Forum Podcast today. Laura and I overlapped when I was at Knox College when we were studying for our MDivs. We even had a chance to attend the Canadian Theological Students Conference as representatives of KNOX way back when it was held at the Atlantic School of Theology. It was kind of a homecoming for Laura, but my first time in the Atlantic provinces, and I've been blessed to be there several other times throughout my life and career. So welcome, Laura. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.
[Laura Alary]
Thank you, John. I'm just so just delighted to have the opportunity to talk with you.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah excellent, and we get to work together now. What a an odd fate that life has taken us in these directions. So it's been a while. Let's catch up a little for the Ministry Forum, audience, maybe you decided to do more schooling and all those kinds of things, and now you're into the work that you do at the college, and we're gonna talk a lot about the other kinds of things you do as an author, but maybe just give me a sort of a sketch of what you been up to for the last 20 some odd years.
[Laura Alary]
Oh, more than that. John, yeah, so when we were at Knox together, that was in the mid 90’s, as you mentioned, I grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Went to school there. I did my undergrad. I had a degree in classics at Dalhousie. And after I finished that, my intention, believe it or not, was to become an Egyptologist. That was my life goal from the time I was, I think, 11 or 12 years old, and then when I got to university - maybe I'm going back further than you intended. But anyway, when I got to university age, I just wasn't quite ready to come to Toronto, which is where I would have to have gone to do Ancient Near Eastern Studies. So I did the next best thing, which was classics in Halifax at Dalhousie, and really enjoyed the degree. But as I was nearing the end of it, this recurring question kept popping up, and that was the “so what” question, like, “What is the purpose of what I'm studying?” I found it very interesting, but I guess I just reached a point where I felt like I wanted to contribute in some purposeful way to the world, but I didn't know what that was, or what to do with this interest I had in the ancient world and ancient languages and literature and so on. And somehow, out of this whirlpool of wondering, I decided I was going to study theology and came to Knox, partly as a bit of an experiment, I think, just to see what that was like to be in the MDiv program. So I was in the MDiv program from ‘92 until ‘96 as you know that there was that brief window of time where it was a four year program instead of three year, and I just hit that exactly on got to the end of that and realized that these academic interests and aspirations that I had had for so many years were still with me. So, I redirected them still toward the ancient world. So, I did a PhD in New Testament, and that took me a long time. I didn't finish that degree until 2003 and I convocated in November, and then the following month my first child was born. So that was another one of these turning points, and my colleagues, fellow students, were all establishing themselves in academic careers. And I certainly know other women who had young children and did that at the same time. However, we also have to make these decisions for ourselves and figure out what works best for us, and I felt that for me at that time in my life, and given my personality, just dividing myself in that way wasn't going to work. So, I stepped off the academic path completely, and I stayed home to raise first my son, and then he was followed fairly quickly by two daughters. And that started me on a whole different kind of lifelong learning, no less than what I'd been doing, but very different. And in some ways, I think it brought me back to an a much older path that I had left behind, and that is storytelling, teaching, playing with language.
Anyway, I'm going to fast forward then quite a number of years. I was home with my kids for about 15 years, and then a whole lot of things in my life changed, and I found myself in need of employment. And despite all the degrees, I lacked experience, so I ended up, for a couple of years, believe it or not, teaching music at a small Montessori School, and toyed with a whole bunch of options, like, should I go back and do an education degree? Should I do Montessori education? Should I do music training? What on earth should I do? Tried out a few things, and then still just hadn't settled anywhere. And then one summer, I happened to see an ad on Facebook for a part-time job at Caven library at Knox, and with the hours and the demands of it just worked so perfectly with my young family. I thought, this is it like I don't even have my CV with me, but I need to cobble something together and apply for this now, because I think the deadline was in a couple of days. Anyway, long story short, I ended up working first part-time, and then my hours have increased at Caven library. Despite not actually being a librarian, I am library assistant two, which really makes me laugh, because to the best of my knowledge, there is no library assistant one unless there's one hidden in a closet somewhere. So, the other thing I do, though, is I'm coordinator of the Mackay Educational Resource Center, which is a special collection focused on faith formation, Christian education, congregational life, current theological and social issues, and within that, we have our picture books in ministry collection, which is, it's kind of a passion project for me. I'm always trying to share my own love. I think of myself kind of as a picture book evangelist, and I'm always trying to help other people see the value of picture books and how they can be useful in in so many settings. So that's amazing.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, that's a path. What I find fascinating is in talking to lots of folks around how they got to Knox for like, their MDiv or or even an MPS in those conversations as well. And certainly, my story is similar. There's kind of a sense of “I think I'll try this out”, or “I wonder if this is the place for me”, and then discerning that sort of space as one does a degree, and that's been a fascinating conversation, because so often we, I think many of us have been wired, or maybe the people who invested heavily in us going on to advanced degree work or doing a university education or college education have made some make assumptions of like, this is your path, this is what you're going to do, and then what are you going to do with it? And you know, there's a sort of sense that everything's supposed to match and fall into place. And yet, for so many, discernment happens, not only within the space of education, but then discernment happens as a lifelong journey, right? Once and done for so many people, and for people who are listening that sense of, you know, so many of us, maybe, as we get older, have a sense of, you know, this is, you know, how did I get here? You know, if you're looking back, it's like, this is not where I imagined I would be. But wow, what a topsy turvy journey that got me to this space.
[Laura Alary]
Yeah, and I've enjoyed listening to conversations with previous guests, because I do think, well, in my experience anyway, there was quite a high intimidation factor around the language of call. And in some cases, I felt very specific expectations, like, this is what a call should be, and this is what it should feel like. And I didn't find that people talked very much about discernment beyond the decision to go to seminary. But as you say, it's ongoing.
[John Borthwick]
And maybe just because I know we're going to switch gears in just a second, maybe just to do a good advertisement for Knox College and Caven library. Maybe you could speak just for a minute or two, just on the opportunities for those who are, I believe, graduates of KNOX that they have related to the library itself, and being able to take out books or connect with books, and then maybe also just a bit on the Mackay and how people can connect with that resource, even though it's physically located in Toronto, at the University of Toronto and at Knox College, there is a way where that can be spread more widely.
[Laura Alary]
Yeah, well, as you say, we do have a beautiful bricks and mortar building and physical books, and here we are, and we're always happy to see people. You know, I'm on the circ desk, I'm more than happy to welcome visitors. But we do take seriously our commitment to alumni as well, and not only alumni, but also other church leaders. So you know, if you're a minister, diaconal minister, a lay leader within the Presbyterian Church in Canada, you can apply for a Knox College Library Card, which will allow you access to our print collection. Now, unfortunately, not our eBooks. That's a whole licensing agreement with U of T that we don't control, but we will, we will mail stuff to you. We will mail books, you know, up to about five at a time anywhere in Canada, at no charge. So, you know, we've got a handful of alumni who do take advantage of this, but we would love for more people to take us up on the offer.
We also do a series of webinars, usually two a year, and you can actually, if you go to the college website, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to visualize the tabs in my head, and I can't. But if you search for Mackay Grow webinars, you can see recordings of previous ones. You can see what's up and coming. So that's a good way of not only connecting people across distances, but also cross denominations. Let's see, have I forgotten anything?
[John Borthwick]
I think that's great. Yeah, that's excellent. There's a lot to you, as a person who works in the space you work in, you've got to keep a lot of things in your in your mind. So that's perfect. That's awesome. Let me just say a little bit about a passion for picture books. I've always in ministry - and maybe my whole life long, but certainly in ministry, I've always enjoyed the way in which a picture book, like really good quality picture books, with the beautiful illustrations or actual picture, pictures and simple writing that conveys a story and moves a story along. I can remember in ministry the number of different times and different iterations that I would that I would share that, either say, with a Christmas Eve service or just other parts of the - and I don't know if we're going to talk about this specifically as we as we go along - but what I found transformative during the pandemic and probably violating a lot of copyright laws, is the number of people who basically took pictures of picture books and then put them on screens and then shared them in live streaming. And it's like, oh, dear, I don't think you're supposed to do that without getting proper licensing or permissions and things like that. So maybe that's just a cautionary note. But even just as a minister of a congregation, children's stories have not always been my favorite part of a service. How one tells a good children's story that's well thought out, and so often I would use a picture book as a way, you know, with a group of kids, not video recorded up at the front, and just sharing a picture book to give a solid message that's been well thought out and well curated by an author, and then beautiful visuals that that's both stimulates an adult mind and a younger person's mind. So I just want to shout out to the joy and celebration of picture books. And as we were going to find out, that's been a part of your journey,
[Laura Alary]
Yes, it has. And thank you for that. It's funny because I sort of had it in the back of my mind that if you didn't ask me, Why should ministry leaders care about picture books? I was going to circle back to it at the end, but maybe it's better to talk about it at the beginning. And it's helpful, I think, for you to share your experience sharing picture books in worship, because that's an obvious way to use them. And honestly, it's not uncommon for people to contact me at the Mackay center and say, okay, you know, I'm preaching here, and this is my theme, or these are the texts for the day. Can you recommend a picture book? And I love playing matchmaker in this way. So yeah, that's another way we try to serve and support our alumni. It’s not uncommon, I think, for ministers who are very experienced and very competent in many areas, to be terrified of children's stories, partly because they can be really unpredictable, right? So, yeah, reading a good picture book is an excellent way to fill that space, but it makes it sound very reductionist. That's not what I mean. Do you want me to keep going about why picture books?
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, please do. I think this could be a helpful conversation for folks to hear, yeah, just why picture books?
[Laura Alary]
Okay, so well, first of all, because I think they're a really excellent introduction to any topic, but particularly difficult or sensitive ones, just a way of opening up conversation and wondering in a gentle kind of way. The other thing about picture books is that, I think, more than any other genre, they are intergenerational and they're communal. I mean, they're meant to be read aloud in a group when you're physically together, so that makes them particularly good for worship. I mean, who doesn't love to sit and listen to a story? For so many people, there's a strong nostalgic dimension to that, but it's also kind of wired into us as human beings that we just we love stories. But I'd take it a step further, and say, apart from any utilitarian value, good picture books - and I say good picture books - are spiritually nurturing, and I'm not just talking about the religious ones here. We actually did a webinar at the Mackay center with Hannah Brown Schock, who's the creator of Picture Book Theology, and she talks a lot about this, about using, not explicitly religious books in church settings. I think what the genius of picture books is that they're taking important ideas or experiences or concepts and distilling them to what's most essential. So they're not watered down. I think they can be more potent than a longer form text, because they've been distilled. You know, take a look at pretty much any book by Matt de la Pena. Last Stop on Market Street is one of my favorite picture books of all time or Milo imagines the world. Both those books have really profound things to say about perception, the way we see the world, the things that we notice, the things we don't notice. Yeah, like I could, I could go on and on. I think good picture books leave space for wondering and for curiosity, like they don't tell us everything. They're kind of like parables in that sense. They make us work to try to figure out, what might this story be saying to me at this point in my life, or to us? And I think the older I get, the more I believe that curiosity is an essential spiritual practice. It keeps us playful, it keeps us open to new possibilities, and it also, I think, keeps us humble so we don't assume too quickly that we know what's going on. We understand what's true, what's false, what needs to happen. I heard in an interview one time with Padre go Toma, and he was talking about the importance of being curious about other people, especially those you don't agree with, and genuinely asking, I wonder why this person believes what they do, or believes the way they do. I wonder, you know, what need that belief is meeting for them? I mean, you may never get an answer, but just asking the question helps counteract the tendency to like to leap to a quick judgment, and maybe it will lead to deeper understanding. So picture books are good for the soul.
[John Borthwick]
They absolutely are, and my intersection with picture books was when I was in my pre-Knox years. I hung out with people who were in the illustration program at Sheridan College, and so some of their projects were actually illustrating picture books. You know the craft of the writer to be concise and to get just the right words, but the word counts are pretty small on a picture book, but also for the illustrator to match with the writer and to craft a picture that that expresses in you know each picture as it expresses an element, or a sense of the words as they go forward. Illustrated Ministry is a resource, and I use them a lot during the pandemic, because what they offered was a picture, one picture, and then just that sense of wondering. I used it for the entire congregation of both virtually, and then once we came out of virtual completely, it was that hybrid thing, and it just gave them a sense of, you know, this picture goes on the screen, and then we just have this sense of wondering around the story, and how powerful illustration along with the words, can really evoke some really sense of curiosity, wondering and meaning making all in the mix.
[Laura Alary]
That's actually when I referred to picture books as communal. I should have included the illustrator in that I didn't, but as I'm listening to you talking, I'm thinking, Yes, that's another thing that makes them communal. Because you have two conversation partners, you've got the writer and you've got the illustrator, and even if they never meet one another in person, they're both contributing to telling this story, and I have had to learn so much about the process of illustration so I can learn how to get out of the way and let the illustrator do their work. Because when I first started, I thought, Oh, the illustrator looks at my words and draws what's written there. No, no, no. It's far, far more than that. In fact, I think the best and the most compelling illustrations are ones that don't just literally interpret what's on the page, but create some kind of a distance between them. And then there's this, you know, there's this sort of gap between what the words say and what the pictures are describing. And then the reader can come to that and sort of interpret it their own way. And it's just a very exciting dance.
[John Borthwick]
So what was your first foray? You know, you've done that. You did the advanced degree you're raising a family, you know, you talked about storytelling and as being a part of who you were and your life. That was a return to a call or a calling within yourself. How did you step into it in the first iteration? Because you'd went from writing a dissertation to now writing hey, let's write, how many words are in a typical children’s book? 1000? Less?
[Laura Alary] 24:04
Less, yeah. So there's kind of two answers to that, I guess. So I'll deal with it in two parts. So I do have a lifelong love of picture books themselves, like I just I've always enjoyed them. I collected them long before I had kids. I used to, you know, make, create, like when I was a little child, make my own books and write stories in them and illustrate them. So I've had, I've had a love for that format for a long, long time. I also love the oral storytelling tradition. So it wasn't just picture books I loved. It was folk tales, fairy tales from around the world. I started teaching Sunday school when I was 14 because they just needed people, and so I got slotted in there. And the best part of it for me was telling stories I absolutely love. To being a storyteller. And by the time I was an undergrad, I remember taking this course from a man named Tom Sinclair Faulkner. Now he was actually a prof in the department of religion at Dalhousie at that time, but I am pretty sure he was at United Church of Kent. Anyway, he ran this like three evening course on biblical storytelling. And it was awesome. I mean, I was just, I think, 19 when I took it, but it's the first time that I actually sat down and thought carefully about how stories actually work and the different elements in them, and that, you know that that little three night course still informs me, I think I never planned, though, to be a writer for children, like I say, there was this whole Egyptology trajectory that didn't happen when I finished my PhD, though there were two things that factor into the story. The first is, I had a horrible case of writer's block, so this lifetime of reading and writing for pleasure, all of a sudden just got choked off completely. And I think it had something to do with putting so much energy into academic writing that was reviewed and critiqued? Well, I was going to say harshly, that's not really fair. But you know, when you write a thesis, the whole point is that people are going to try to attack it and knock it down and you need to defend it. That didn't come naturally to me. I struggled with academic writing. I struggled with my own inner editor that was wanted every single word to be perfect. So by the time, I used an analogy one time about this lime tree that my mom tried to grow in our house in Halifax, and you know it, after many years, it brought forth one lime, and then it promptly died from the effort. So that's kind of how writing a thesis felt for me. I thought, okay, I can do this. I can do this, and I squeezed out these 350 pages, and then I couldn't write anything like I couldn't write in my journal. I couldn't write a letter, because every time I went to write a word, I was critiquing it, and I felt so sad, because this thing that had been a source of pleasure and consolation to me, my whole life was gone, and I didn't know what to do about it. But then the other thing, of course, was at the at that very time I became a mom, so I was kind of catapulted from academic life into a whole different kind of life at home with this infant, saying to myself, well, now here I am. I have to shape this human life, and I'm not quite sure how to do it. Like I have a vision, but I don't have any experience. And what am I going to do? So instinctively, I knew that books and stories were going to be part of this somehow. So I started taking my baby son to the library. We went to storytelling concerts. I was constantly making up songs and rhymes and just, you know, playing with words. And I bought collections of folk and fairy tales, which were way above his head, but that's okay, you know, I just wanted him to hear language. I wanted him to touch books, to understand how they worked. So we were both immersed in story. And as I did this, it occurred to me that this actually might help me through my own impasse with writing. So I decided to try to write a story for Ian, that's my son, and I just fell in love with the process of doing it, and just kept on and on I did in those early days. You know, through a friend of a friend, got an opportunity to show some of my stories to a real editor, somebody from Kids Can actually and it was a really hard conversation on the phone. You know, she did her best to be encouraging, and she did say to me, you have some good ideas, but… and then there was this whole laundry list of things that that I wasn't doing well, but that was really important learning for me, because I realized that although it may seem to be a simple thing to write a picture book, it's actually far more difficult than people assume. It's a whole craft and I decided this is something I really want to get better at. So I kept at it. The first book that I had accepted for publication was a book called, Is That Story True? And it was. It's very quirky in its theme. Really, it has to do with literal versus metaphorical truth, which doesn't sound like a likely topic for a picture book, but I do think it works anyway. Woodlake decided to take a chance on this, and I've always been grateful to them for giving me that first opportunity, and then I subsequently published other books with them and then, you know, over the years, kept banging on the doors of the Canadian indie publishers, and gradually broke through in that area as well.
[John Borthwick]
I really want our audience to understand, and maybe they, maybe they do. But just the sense of the gift of being able to tell a story or express a message in such a short, kind of compact kind of way I have a friend whose son… actually, it's weird I had two individuals in my life… so I had a friend in the community who he had heard that I think it's Ernest Hemingway used to write these tiny things, and Ernest Hemingway wrote massive volumes, like massive books, but one of his practices was to write something really short, as short as could be. And so this friend of mine, he started doing it on social media. And then at the same time, very similar time, another friend of mine's son, Skylar Hammond, created what he called Tiny Stories. And so his stories are even shorter. And he just got picked up by TVO to do these short little episodes, like the in between TVO shows and so now they're doing a video kind of aspect. He created a picture book, and it's basically a story that's, I don't know, is it 100 words? It seems they're really, really, short, but they tell us sort of in just a few lines. It sort of expands your imagination. And especially for folks who've been preachers, there's always that sense of but I got so much to say, like, how would I ever distill that? Or when someone asks you, how would you sum up your sermon in three sentences? And sometimes that's a tool that you're supposed to use as a way of crafting, making sure you're actually telling one story or giving a message. But I know a lot of preachers who have a really hard time distilling so I just want to just honour that work as a picture book author, how that comes together, it’s a real craft, a real gift.
[Laura Alary]
It's definitely a discipline. And it's interesting that you should mention preaching, because I frequently fall back on my background in preaching, and I have to give a shout out to Stephen Ferris, preaching prof at Knoxl while we were there, and I remember him saying, “You need to be able to tell me in a sentence what your sermon is about, and if you can't do it, then you need to go back and fix it, because you don't know what it's about”. And I'm paraphrasing there, but that was the message of it. And I have to do that all the time with picture books. Yeah, you need to be crystal clear, because there's just, there's no fat like you just have to know. Every word you choose has to advance the story somehow.
[John Borthwick]
And so you've written now a number of children's books and picture books. How many?
[Laura Alary]
The one that came out last fall, all the faces of me that was number 15. And then I've got five coming out in 2025, and then I guess five more over the next couple of years beyond that. 2025 though, is an unusual year for me, and just a lot of them. You know, some their publication was delayed, and the plan originally wasn't to have all five of them come out at once. Two are coming out on the same day, which is definitely not desirable, but, you know, I'm not going to complain either.
[John Borthwick]
So where does your inspiration come? I've read a few, I haven't read all 15, but I've read some of your children's book and use some of them in worship. I think they're great. Where does your inspiration come from?
[Laura Alary]
Okay, so this may, may be a bit idiosyncratic. But I'm actually going to distinguish between inspiration and ideas, because one thing that has helped me immensely is realizing that.. well, first let me say I don't know where the inspiration comes from. That's the mysterious part of it, like sometimes I'll just know what to do with an idea, and I'll start writing. Other times, I can have an idea, but it will sit with me for, you know, seven years, and the inspiration just doesn't come so there's the completely uncontrolled part of it. Where do ideas come from? Ideas are all over the place, and I don't create them. I just have to pay attention. So I try to make a practice of being observant, like I watch people, I listen in on conversations. I read a lot, I ask a lot of questions. So inspiration for specific stories has come from, in some cases, newspaper articles. In one case, somebody sent me something and said, “Hey, I think this would be a good story” and yeah, I agreed. Sometimes it will be a memory from my own childhood, or, you know, a little fragment of it that I can put with something else. Sometimes it's something that my own kids did when they were young. So for example, one of the books that's coming out in May called Wind Stopped Blowing. It started out its life almost 20 years ago, when I was at the park with my son, Ian, and he'd spent all this time like he was two and a half or something like that, building this leaf pile, and he was going to go down the slide and land in it, and he'd worked so hard, and this rogue gust of wind came along and just blew the thing all over the place. And he stood in the playground, and he raised his face to heaven, and he just screamed. Wind stopped blowing. And I remember at the time laughing and laughing, but also thinking, oh my gosh, like, that's this little symbol of human resistance to change. And I wrote it down in a book, because if I don't write these things down, they'll evaporate and I lose them. And that's a story that I wrote and rewrote and rewrote and submitted for. Well, like I say, it's been about 18 years, and it's finally coming out. And another book, Sun in My Tummy, that one, it's about photosynthesis. Although it doesn't use the word photosynthesis. But that one was stimulated by a question from a child at the Montessori School where I was working. He wanted to know where food comes from, and that led to a whole lunchtime conversation. And I thought, hey, I think, think I can do something with this. What grew in Larry's garden? That was another one that was a started life as a newspaper article.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, that's amazing. I appreciate Elizabeth Gilbert and she wrote a book, Big Magic, and I love how she crafts and talks about inspiration. So just the nuance of how you described it, and this notion of demons, like inspiration and the connection of demons, the idea that a demon was not a bad thing. It was a thing that somehow came to you in an ancient way of speaking. There was a sort of a sense of the demon has come to you.
[Laura Alary]
I think she uses the word. She talks about genius too. Genius is not a quality that certain people possess and others don't, but this mysterious visitor who kind of drops into your life, and you have to go, thank you, you know, thank you for visiting well.
[John Borthwick]
And she talks about this idea, one of the things that really got me was when she talks about another author, and she doesn't name the author. I think I know who the author is, but she talks about she had this idea and it kept coming to her, but it never and I liked how you used the word, someone sent you something, and I agreed, because I think, I think there's a play on that that she uses as well. There's sort of a sense of, here's this idea, have this idea for a book, or it's in me, it's coming. It has to come out somehow, but it's not coming. And then some other author did a book that was basically her exact idea. I don't know how people knew this, but some people were saying, isn't that your what your idea was or whatever? And she was like, it wasn't for me. I didn't agree myself, and inspiration didn't agree. And so this other person was given the idea they like, almost like inspiration comes and it'll move on if it doesn't get an agreement with someone. I think that's fascinating.
[Laura Alary]
This is not the same thing that you're talking about, but it is something that I've observed in publishing that fascinates me, and that is, not only do you have trends, but I can't figure out who's setting the trends. So for instance, a little while ago, I wrote this story that involved knitting, and I I sent it off to multiple publishers, and I kept getting these notes back, saying, “Oh, we just accepted a story about knitting last month”, and I'm like, what, like, what's in the air right now? And then that's happened to me with other things as well. And it's not that I'm it's not that I'm consciously seeing books about knitting because they haven't even hit the shelves yet. It's almost like being part of a, you know, a murmuration of starlings or something, and everybody's just kind of going in different directions, but together. And it's, it's a mystery to me. I don't quite know why that happens, but, yeah, but it does.
[John Borthwick]
We’re recording just before Christmas, and in one of my favorite Christmas movies, elf, there it is a children's publisher. It's in the backstage and that whole conversation with Peter Dinklage as this sort of expert guy who's come in to give them some ideas, and he's got his little book, and it's like, you know, soft vegetables are too vulnerable, so we're not going to do that. And yeah, how people get those kind of think that thinking, so you've already sort of noted it, and maybe it's a good segue into that question around, you know, what if you've been doing this for quite some time? So what have you noticed in the industry, or in the publishing industry, what changes have you noticed? How have you had to adapt as you've gone along? Or maybe, what have been, what's been that lifelong journey for you, that lifelong learning journey you've been on since you started and published that first book? How has it tracked for you? What have you noticed?
[Laura Alary]
Well, one thing I've definitely noticed is that word counts have continued to drop. So when I first started, I would say that general wisdom was you needed to keep your picture book at or just below 1000 words. These days, I would never submit a manuscript for a picture book that was 1000 words. I keep it 800 sometimes lower than that. And there's part of me, well, actually I should take a step back from that, because one of the books that I have coming out in 2026 is a picture book biography that's actually longer. It's also 48 pages, as opposed to the standard 32 but it's also aimed at an upper elementary audience. So my hope is that maybe the market is opening a little bit toward illustrated books for older children. So rather than just having picture books be for the youngest readers and then moving into the like early readers that they can I think there's, there's all sorts of space for illustrated books, for older elementary kids. So that's an aside, but the word counts are dropping, for sure, and part of that, I think, is because attention spans are also shrinking, not only among children, I think adults as well. I mean, I'm a lifelong reader, but I also spend more time on social media than I ever imagined I would. So, and I hate this phrase, but like, I'm consuming short form content, and that's affected my attention span, and I'm very aware of that, and I try to do things to push back against it. But, you know, for children, it's really hard. So I think, you know, it's kind of chicken or egg, like as we continue to drop word count, we make it worse. Having said that, though, another part of me really likes the challenge of saying more with fewer words, because it is a craft and a discipline to do that. So, yeah, so there's a there's good and bad dimensions of it, and I think another change has been the extent to which authors need to be involved in marketing or promoting their own books. And for some that comes quite naturally, they really excel at it. And for others, like yours truly, it does not come naturally. It's a struggle. I mean, the other thing I've noticed, and this isn't a change, I don't think, but it speaks to change, like the constant change in the industry. There are trends. So the things that I started out thinking, Oh, this is my genre. Like, I love picture book biographies. I love writing in a folk tale style. Well, nobody wants that right now, like the market is saturated with picture book bios. So I keep writing them because I love them, but they're not finding homes, so I just kind of sit on those manuscripts, hoping that maybe someday the market's going to shift again. I mean, I know that it will. It's almost impossible to predict those trends, though, because, like, everything in publishing happens so slowly. So for instance, I had a manuscript accepted over the summer, and it's coming out in spring 2028 so that's longer than it used to be when I started. So, you know, you, if you walk into Chapters Indigo or something like that it's like what you're seeing on the shelves is like light from distant stars. You know, it seems fresh and dazzling and new, but it's actually taken a long time to reach you.
[John Borthwick]
That’s amazing. Yeah, the whole area of the publishing industry. I have a really good friend who has been intersected with that age, that world quite a bit, especially Canadian children's authors, the children's publishers, book publishers, and yeah, it just the real challenge to keep Canadian publishing houses operate those and keep them going is quite a struggle, from what I've heard, and we've lost some over the years too, that were really solid ones that you depend, that you could depend on as both as an author, illustrator, but also as somebody who appreciated what they would produce. What I find interesting in that world is the how would I say? I don't know if this is true for everybody, but I would say for me personally, just as you were describing your relationship with your son, wanting him to feel and see and have a tactile book, of all the books that I would say people could purchase, or would want to purchase, a picture book, is one of the ones where you really wouldn't want that on an e-reader. You wouldn't want to consume that on a screen in the same way. I'm sure people are still publishing and moving it into those worlds, but there's just something about investing in a hard cover most of the time, sometimes soft cover, but hard cover picture book with a nice little dust cover and the whole tactileness. I mean, even with really little kids, we do the thing where you can actually feel and touch the pages. But there's just something about investing in a picture book that's way different, probably, from any other kind of book out there?
[Laura Alary]
Yeah, I agree, and you're right, there is that tactile dimension. I mean, the book, we don't often think of it this way, but the book itself is an amazing piece of technology. When you compare it to a scroll, for instance. So if you watch a young child learn to do something like turn pages, and you have to teach them. No, you don't have to take, take the corner and turn it. You can't grab it from the inside. And also, having a child in your lap or snuggled up next to you, or children seated around you in a circle, you can't, can't do that with an e-reader, It's not the same. A lot of books are made available in electronic form, and sometimes that's really useful if, you know, if you're in a classroom and you want to, and you've got the rights to project images on a screen, or, you know, it's a good way of sharing a book with a large audience. But that's not that they're not at their best, I don't think in electronic form. sometimes people will talk about the cost of picture books. And I get it like, I don't have an infinite book budget, either, but I do love to support other authors. I love to support independent bookstores when I can. And the more you're sort of part of the industry, and you actually see what's involved in producing a picture book, you really realize that this is, it's a piece of art that I'm investing in here.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, it's definitely of all the books on my shelves that I've moved on several iterations, the picture books are the ones that stick around like they no matter what they get moved, they get brought back, and they stay around. And I'll probably pass them on to, you know, my kids. And future generations, perhaps that they can have that a chance to read those as well. The other phenomenon I've seen, and I think on your socials, because you're a social media influencer these days. I have a connection with an individual who ran a charity for quite some time, good with words. And what they did was these, um, during the pandemic, they got - because they had the rights in these relationships with publishers and authors - they created these, walking trails. So these book trails, story time trail was what they were branded as. I've seen other iterations of it, some libraries are doing this just as a way of getting people outside and then getting the chance to walk. So we did it actually at the church I used to serve in Guelph, at St Andrews in Guelph, we did a couple of iterations where, over a weekend, we put these little basically like election signs out of a children's author, a Canadian children's author, and then it was a beautiful, intergenerational experience, where a family would come and read the book together and watch the kid go from one to the next, and they would read the book, and then it was a great way of also saying to parents and grandparents, hey, if you want to buy that book and have it at home, that'd be another wonderful way of seeing it. But I think you were a part of one of those very recently, within the last month or two?
[Laura Alary]
Yeah, two in fact, I love story walks. And it just so happened that this fall, What Grew in Larry's Garden ended up as part of two different story walks, one with a church that actually abutted a retirement home. And so there was a pathway that led between the church and the and the retirement home, and they put the story walk along the path so that members of the congregation the community, but also residents, could come and just walk that short distance and read the story. So I thought that was really lovely. And then I got an email out of the blue from the principal of school in New York State, and they said that they had just opened this. It was actually an incredibly beautiful garden space, kind of like almost an outdoor, I was going to say, an atrium, but that would be indoors. It was an outdoor garden space for their kindergarten kids. And it was so cool because they had permanent signs, but then you could open them and change what was in them. So what they did was they had all of the pages laid out, and then at the end they had some information. I think they had a QR code that people could scan, and it had some downloadable question sheets and things like that. And then I wrote a card for them, and they put that in there as well, just sort of a little message to the kids, but yeah, it's just a beautiful community building way of using a picture book, although it was funny because I talked to the principal, and she said the experience of actually cutting a book apart to make these things was hard for her, and I've never done that. I think I'd have a hard time with that too.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, the individual that we worked with, they, they worked with a printer and with the publishers to basically create these, that full size thing, and yeah, and they did the QR codes too, and sometimes would connect with the author and have the author so again, families could scan through the QR code, and then it would be like a video that would come up of the author talking a little bit about the story. So for those who are listening, if you see a story walk, or if you're a church and you have a bit of a lane way, you know, connect with some of these organizations that are doing this kind of stuff, or partner with libraries or cities in Guelph, one of the city parks did this over a summer, and it was just a, you know, three or four different books, just a beautiful way of, again, highlighting picture books and Canadian authors and again, it was these ones were also based on themes, so conversations around Indigenous issues, conversations around racism, ableism, things like that. So books that sort of highlight diversity and things like that, it was a beautiful way of highlighting those, as you said earlier. You know, in a simple and yet complex and curious imagining kind of way is really neat. So when this podcast comes out, it'll be January, and as you said, authors are supposed to share what's coming out. So you've got a new book coming out, and it's a part of a series. It's called Rise, A Children's Guide To Eastertide. And I love that part of, let's say, your ministry that you've been doing is connecting, you know, seasons of the Church year, things that we would call theological concepts, and all those kinds of things in the work that you're doing as well, in a really interesting and exciting, accessible way. So can you tell us a bit more about Rise that's coming out, and you can say when, and then maybe talk a little bit about the series, and if you like, even share a bit of an excerpt of that book?
[Laura Alary]
I'd be happy to so yes, Rise is being published on January 14. And kind of tricky timing, in a way, because, you know, we've just traveled through the arc of the Church year, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany. We're just catching our breath and it's going to be Lent, but we wanted to make sure that the book was available in plenty of time for Easter and Eastertide. So yeah, January 14th.
Rise, as you mentioned, is part of a series, and I didn't realize when I started to write it that I was writing a series. My work on the church year has come directly out of things that have been important in my own family, my own household, so I wanted to make the church year, the rhythms of the Church year, part of my own children's experience. And it was years ago, and I specifically wanted a book for Lent. And sorry, I'm not I'm not being very clear here. I had specific things in mind that I was looking for. And you have to keep in mind too, this was what like 15 years ago or so. I wanted the story of Jesus, death and resurrection to be set in the context of his whole life. So, I didn't just want a story about his death, I wanted to approach Lent as a more positive and purposeful time, something that was spacious, rather than restrictive or even punitive, which is sometimes how I experienced it as a child. But I also wanted a book that would help children make connections between Biblical stories, their own, their own lived experience, and Lenten practices. So the things that we do during Lent we don't just do because it's Lent, but they actually have a bigger purpose than that. So I mean that was my laundry list of what I wanted from a book, and not surprisingly, I couldn't find it. So I thought, well, I'm just going to write something, so I did. I wrote this book, and I used it in my own family for quite a number of years. And then I thought, you know, maybe somebody else might be interested in this as well. So I shopped it around a little bit, and it was accepted by Paraclete Press, and it was actually quite well received. So I thought, well, you know, maybe I should have a go at writing another one in a similar format. So I wrote one for Advent called Look. And then a few years, well, more than a few years later, I guess, Breathe, A Child's Guide To Ascension Pentecost. And the growing time came out, and then I thought I was done. I figured, okay, I've sort of hit the three great days. I've got Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, a nice little trilogy. And then my son said to me, one day, when are you going to write one for Easter. And I said, Well, Ian, you know, Make Room is a Child's Guide to Lent and Easter so we do end on Easter Sunday. And he said, Well, what about the rest of it? I was, I was mortified to realize that I had left out the entire season of Eastertide, and all of the resurrection appearances, all of those stories. And I realized this, this cannot be, like I have to do something about this. So I started thinking about the next book and how I was going to approach this season for children, it's got the same I knew it was going to have the same format as the other books, because, you know, when you start writing a series, people come to expect that. And it also has kind of a central question, like all of the other books do. So at one point, the child narrator is thinking about this moment where Jesus meets, or rather, Mary encounters Jesus in the garden, and it makes her think about losses in her own life, like the death of her grandfather, the death of a beloved pet. And she says, Jesus came back to Mary. I wish those I love would come back to me. Sometimes it's hard to see what Easter has to do with me, and that was kind of my starting point. Like, I think there's a lot of truth there Easter. And again, I'm partly going on my own experience as a child, but also conversations I've had with other children over the years, it's hard to connect with an event that's not only so distant in time, but also utterly beyond our experience. So, you know, if God made Jesus alive again, why doesn't God do that with the ones we love? So what has resurrection got to do with me? Like, that's the that's the central question. So what I wanted to do in rise was to explore a broader view of resurrection that includes fresh starts and new beginnings of different kinds. And I think that's justifiable, because even in the Biblical narratives like those resurrection appearances, the empty tomb is not the only place where resurrection is happening. And I'm thinking especially of Peter, who is and it's funny, you know, when you look for children's books about Peter, there's not that many that cover this territory. He's so burdened by guilt and shame over his betrayal, his denial of Jesus. And I absolutely love the scene in the Gospel of John, where, you know he's on the beach with Jesus. Jesus has already fed him. Jesus has extended grace, but Peter's still he's still not quite there yet. And Jesus keeps asking him, Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And it's so powerful because it ends with Jesus putting trust in Peter again. He gives him another chance. And I think that kind of resurrection is easier for us to identify with. And then once we start to see that resurrection is perhaps bigger and broader than we thought, we begin to see it and the risen Christ in all sorts of places. So if, if you'll bear with me, I'll actually read that little tiny piece from the book. So the larger context is just for your readers who don't know the series, the books are subdivided into sections, and so this section is called on the beach, and it starts with a retelling of part of the biblical story of Peter, and then it moves into contemporary reflections from the point of view of the child. So this is the child speaking:
…resurrection is a big word. It means rise again. I used to think it was a word only for what happened to Jesus, but now I'm not so sure. Sometimes we all trip and fall, but falling does not have to be the end of the story. Jesus’ friend Peter did something bad because he was scared, but Jesus let him try again. I like how Jesus feeds his friends, even if they didn't really deserve it. I like how he gives Peter another chance to show what he can do. Maybe Jesus could see that Peter was much more than the mistake he made. Maybe this is resurrection too.
So I guess to kind of sum up the series, I'd say, I'm always trying to connect scripture and the liturgical seasons with the actual lives of children. And I would say that this is my way of helping them develop the habit of kind of wondering, Where am I in the story? Where is it part of me. Where does it feel familiar or true?
[John Borthwick]
And what would you hope? Who would you hope? Would be using this, families, church, schools, or what are you thinking?
[Laura Alary]
Yeah, thinking all of the above. I think it’s a really good resource for families who want to have regular faith practices as part of their home life. Definitely it could be used in worship as part of Christian education program. One thing that people ask me sometimes is, how do I use it? Because it is much longer than a conventional picture book. Like the word count in these is, I think it's closer to 2000 words, so it's way above your standard picture book. And if you were to sit down and read it, it would take 15 minutes. But you don't have to just sit down and read it. Like I say, it is subdivided into sections. So you could just choose one section, just read the Biblical story, followed by the child's reflection. And then I'll also let you know that there is a free downloadable discussion and Activity Guide available from the publisher, also on the product page on my website, but it's got all, all kinds of ideas for, you know, things to read and do and talk about.
[John Borthwick]
I really appreciate that. Over the years in preaching, sometimes I would use some different resources, often basically intended for children, but as a way of engaging and even sharing as a part of, say, the creation of a sermon, just that sense of, you know, we can look to academic commentaries, but you could also look to how someone is trying to retell the story or shape the concepts in the story from a child's point of view. And so I think that's beautiful what you read. Because I think sometimes we forget that many people in the pews may also still have a child's point of view of some of these big theological concepts. And so how do we make that accessible for some folks, if we go the no offense to the academic route, but if we go full on academic route, we may lose people in that in the midst of that. So how do we have a good balance of making sure that we're connecting with people at the level that they might be at, or the way in which they've I've found some people lock into theological concepts like resurrection at a young age, and then it doesn't get unpacked, or doesn't evolve through their life. So sometimes they're listening to sermons and they hear a word resurrection, they're going back to how they understood it from a long, long time ago.
[Laura Alary]
Yeah. And I think another thing that a book like this can do is to is to model that kind of beginner's mind when it comes to these sorts of concepts that we maybe we think we know and understand, or maybe we don't. But, you know, you read a book like this, and you hear the child wondering honestly and genuinely and honestly engaging with the stories. And I think that that's an important model. And again, I mean, I have an academic background, it's not that I devalue that or think it's not important, but, but it can also come with a kind of authority, like this is, you know, this is the way it is. This is how you need to think about it. And sometimes we need to be broken out of that so that we can, engage truthfully ourselves and bring our own ideas and questions
[John Borthwick]
And I just want to name and celebrate that gift within you, Laura, the sense that I know that you have an academic background and that you are a theologian in your own right, a preacher in your own right, and through your lifelong learning journey, you have been given this gift to be able to take all of that and yet express it that it would be accessible to as many people as possible, but definitely accessible to a child. And that's a gift that I a gift that not everybody is given, and certainly a challenge for many who have taken a route of, you know, an academic, right, writing 360 pages of a thesis and everything else, it can be very difficult for them to articulate something as distilled down to less than 700 words, a concept you know, even how they communicate.
[Laura Alary]
Thank you for acknowledging that. That actually means a lot to me, because confession time here. One thing that has kind of dogged me over the years is a sense, and I don't know whether it's coming from inside me or from outside, but sometimes there's the sense that you know you did all of this study and you're writing picture books, like, what? What are you doing? How? And the word waste has actually been used with me, and it stings when someone says that to me, but I'll tell you two little stories. One is when I think my second or third, no, maybe fourth or fifth, book was coming out, and I had lunch with my thesis advisor, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. And I was a little bit nervous, because if anybody has the right to say, hey, you wasted your education, it would probably be her. But she didn't say that at all. We got to the end, and she said, this work lights you up. She said, I feel joy in you that I didn't feel when you were doing your PhD. No kidding, yeah. And I think that, you know, when we think about call that, there's an element of that too. It's like, what effect is this? Is this work having, having on me as a person, and I do feel joy when I'm able to go. Create something and share it and feel that it's meaningful. And then the other was some communication I had from, or rather had with, the person who had originally chaired my doctoral committee. And then he went back to England so he couldn't supervise my thesis, but I'd asked him to look at the manuscript for one of these children's books. And again, I did have this sort of sense that, oh my gosh, is he going to think that this is a come down somehow? And he said to me, You do realize that way more people are going to read this than read your thesis? He said, I feel like this is a really valuable contribution, and it's not that we, all you know, need to be affirmed externally all the time, but gosh, it was. It was really nice to hear, to hear people I respect say that.
[John Borthwick]
I'm so glad you heard those words and had those those interactions, and that those can anchor you as a part of your continuation in your ministry and what you do, acknowledging that, yeah, there's a lot of outside voices and inside voices that we're constantly working with. One of the themes at Ministry Forum is is trying to help people understand the diversity of what ministry looks like, especially in our denomination, we we've gotten a little bit like, unless you're a minister in a congregation, you know what really are you? And I've heard that even as I've transitioned to this, this role at the college, there's just a sense that we have a sense that there's only one way to do ministry. And I think that's been a tragic reality for perhaps generations, or at least in the last 60 years that we've highlighted and elevated the congregational minister to such a level that it's now it's disenfranchised so many, and there's been so many voices who've done amazing things and have offered their gifts in such a beautiful way in the church. And yet much of that has not been recognized, or it's been seen as that less than. And that's a tragedy. So we want to celebrate in Ministry Forum all the diversity of what call might look like, what discernment is, and also recognizing that that's a journey. It's not necessarily something you know in one moment you may be called to do this role, and then another moment you may be called to do a different role and that's just the path that you've been set upon as inspiration and spirit has has breathed into you to do those things. And so I think for the Ministry Forum community, I'm hoping this is not only an advertisement for the books that you do and, I mean, I do want it to be that as well. Like to celebrate the books that you've created and the books that are coming to be born in the next 10 books in the next few years. I mean, that's amazing as well. And I think this resource that you've created of the Church year is a beautiful thing as well. And I hope folks will check that out and use that in their ministries, but also just the story of who you are and how you've walked this walk with Jesus and with the journey of your life. Yeah, I would highly praise that person who said, you're probably having a greater reach than many of us in ministry, to have people read a story and be shaped and transformed in some way by that story. And so I celebrate that for you, Laura,
[Laura Alary]
Well, I'm really grateful to you and to Ministry Forum for giving me the chance to tell more of this story. Because, yeah, I certainly didn't want this conversation just to be an advertisement for my books either. I mean, obviously I want to sell books, but, but I wanted, yeah, I wanted our conversation to say more than that. And, yeah, I hope that it has, I hope that's raised some questions for people.
[John Borthwick]
It seems to have been a theme. This episode will probably be the first, first episode of our second season. And so last season, some of that stuff just sort of percolated up. It wasn't intended. It just is how it goes. And I'm sure, as one who hangs in the creative world, it's sort of like I didn't know where this came from. It just sort of happened. Is there anything you'd want to share that you didn't get a chance to share? And you're thinking, hey, if John doesn't ask me this, I really need to say that.
[Laura Alary]
Um, I don't think so, John, because the piece that I had in the back of my mind to say we actually covered at the beginning. So yeah, I feel like I've said what I said what I need and want to say.
[John Borthwick]
Spoken as a true picture book author, I have said what I need to say in the word count I've got, submitting it to the publisher. Let's get this thing recorded, and let's be complete. Laura, I am so grateful for knowing you for over 20 years, and then some. I'm so grateful to return to the college where I graduated. You graduated, and somehow we get to work on this same sort of staff team at Knox College and just grateful for this conversation today. So thank you so much for taking some time to be with us on the Ministry Forum Podcast.
[Laura Alary]
My pleasure, John, thank you.
[John Borthwick]
Thanks for joining us today on the Ministry Forum Podcast. We hope today's episode resonated with you and sparked your curiosity. Remember, you're not alone in your ministry journey. We're at the other end of some form of technology, and our team is committed to working hard to support your ministry every step of the way. If you enjoyed today's episode, tell your friends, your family, your colleagues. Tell Someone, please don't keep us a secret. And of course, please subscribe, rate and leave a review in the places you listen to podcasts, Your feedback helps us reach more ministry leaders just like you, and honestly, it reminds us that we're not alone either, and don't forget to follow us on social media at Ministry Forum, on all of our channels, you can visit our website at Ministry Forum.ca, for more resources keeping up with upcoming events and ways to connect with our growing community until next time. May God's strength and courage be yours in all that you do. May you be fearless, not reckless, and may you be well in body, mind and spirit, and may you be at peace.