A Book Review by Jeannie Babb

Playing with Icons: The Spirituality of Recalled Childhood
By John Pridmore
with foreward by Jerome Berryman
197 pp. The Center for the Theology of Childhood. $24.95

John Pridmore’s thorough and insightful book will capture the imagination of those who nurture children, especially in religious settings. Playing with Icons offers more an analysis of beautifully written case studies than a scientific survey. Pridmore, a retired Anglican priest, based his study on published autobiographies of childhood. He lists over a hundred such works in the bibliography, weaving evocative passages throughout the body of the book.

Pridmore invites the reader on an existential journey to play with and welcome the child. He likens children to icons, which when painted on wood gaze past us to behold God, even as we gaze at them and beyond them to God. Like an icon, a child’s vision of the divine lends us our own sighting. Pridmore invites us not only to pray with these icons, but to play with them and recognize this playfulness as a sort of prayer. Continue reading →