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As you may have read already if you’re subscribed to my email list, my friend and co-leader Luke Fredenberg wrote a kids’ book about the end times! I got to hear Luke’s excited/stressed updates as the entire process unfolded, and it’s so incredible to see this project complete.
The Boy in Two Places is written for families to imagine together what it will look like for the church (especially our youngest brothers and sisters) to live through the days of turmoil right before Jesus comes back. I was touched by Luke’s portrayal of how deeply rich and glorious life in the end times will be, even as deep and real sorrow touch us, too. It makes me rethink my priorities even now, and set my heart all over again to live for eternity!
Luke was gracious enough to make time for an interview with me to share with you! (This interview is slightly edited for conciseness and clarity. As a special bonus, my email subscribers received the audio of this interview, so if you missed it, sign up and reply to the first email with a request for the audio!)
So, Luke, how would you describe what The Boy in Two Places is about?
It’s about a boy who’s living in the end times, and he’s looking back on his life before and comparing and contrasting— “My life as a kid in the end times looks like this, and my life in the past looked very different.” He’s kind of weighing that, both the good things and the difficult things. It’s not a timeline of actual end time events; it’s more to paint a picture of what life specifically for a kid will look like in the end times. There are lots of emotion words and lots of very normal things that kids do as kids; it just looks different in their life currently versus life in the days before Jesus comes back.
What was the original idea? How did you come up with the inspiration for this book?
I love writing, and I always wanted to write. I appreciate kids’ books that are totally just fun and engaging (my son Cohen has some) but I also wanted— there’s got to be a way to keep it fun and light-hearted but also communicate Bible truths. For years I was trying to write different Bible themes. I toyed with the Sermon on the Mount; I toyed with lots of stuff. I would get an idea and start writing, but after a few hours all my ideas would run out!
But this one came about right before COVID and… there’s so little material out there on the end times, specifically related to raising your children in it. I wanted to write a resource to get families into the end times story and talking about it with their kids.
I didn’t know the best approach to do that. I originally started with the timeline idea, trying to walk through what’s going to happen, and I was like, “No, I think it would be better and more helpful if I just did something in a way that kids could relate to, and just paint a picture of what life looks like in the end times.” The injection of the end time message has been the most transformational thing in my life since being saved, so I thought, “How can I do that for kids and families who are maybe not plugged into the end time narrative right now?”
So you saw a need and wanted to fill it! What was the writing process like?
It was very different than I thought. After I got the vision to focus on painting a picture of life in the end times rather than the timeline, I started thinking, “What are things that kids do or that kids can relate to?” So that’s when I started thinking about some of the words that you’ll see, like “dreams”; every kid’s got dreams. The emotion of joy, the emotion of sadness, running around, being goofy… what do kids do? And then to transfer that, what does that look like in the end times?
Once I was ready to have someone one else look at it (which was a bit terrifying!), I sent it to an editor. She had a lot to say [laughs], a lot of feedback on the flow and on words that were not child-appropriate or could be said more simply or more concretely. I had a rhyme pattern from the beginning, but I didn’t have the cadence. When you read a children’s book, it sounds like you’re swaying and dancing to it. My book rhymed, but it didn’t have that cadence. She helped me with that, and I never would have even thought of that!
From when I sent it to the editor until the finished product, the book has changed so much. We probably went back and forth maybe five or six times, where I would send her the initial thing, she’d make edits, send it back to me, I would tweak it, send it back to her— I wasn’t expecting that much involvement and that much transformation of the book. That was really fun because the editor added a different perspective; she’s a mom and has kids and just knows that world probably better than I do, and so it was really just a fun development.
As a missionary on staff at The Prayer Room, you spend a lot of hours a week in the prayer room. How did that impact your writing? Were you writing in the prayer room? Were you getting ideas from your time in the prayer room?
I pretty much wrote the whole thing in the prayer room, which I think is a really cool component. The original idea came in a prayer meeting, and then it was such a cool writing process for me because it wasn’t just writing, it was a lot of critical thing and praying. Again, I started off with, “How do I paint a picture of life in the end times for a kid?” At the beginning that’s a cool idea, but then how do you write about it? How do you paint a picture?
Every kid experiences sadness— they stub their toe, or they lose at a game, or normal kid things, but what does sadness look like for a kid in the end times? There are about ten different action words like running, or emotions like fear, throughout the book. With some of them, like the word “sadness,” I camped out for an entire two-hour prayer meeting, just trying to hone in and pray about it. For many of them I would write down ideas that were cool and rhyming, but then I thought, “No, it just doesn’t settle; I can make this better. This doesn’t accurately communicate what I want. What does sadness look like in the end times? This doesn’t really fit.”
It was a lot of back and forth with the Lord, and a lot of tweaking. I would write a stanza down and then pray through it, and then would need to go back to the drawing board or look at it from a different light. It was really a ton of interaction with the Lord and He gave a lot of ideas. I was typing and praying and just waiting on the Lord, and then an idea would come, like, “Oh yeah, sadness could look like mourning over your friends who were faithful to Jesus and lost their lives, that’s real!”
Throughout the whole tone of the book, I wanted to communicate the intensities and difficulties of the end times, but no doom and gloom. I wanted to communicate peace and that the Lord is with you. When I would have an idea that was a little too heavy, I would have to pray though it and the Lord would bring me back to center, like, “How do I communicate this in a way that doesn’t scare away all the kids?”
Did you end up having a favorite spread in the book?
Probably the “fear” one. It’s probably my favorite illustration, just because my illustrator Philip did incredibly, and he took my writing to the next level with his interpretation of it. I was like, “Oh dang, yeah! Let’s go with your idea; what you wanted to communicate is even better than what I had originally intended!”
Fear is such a strong emotion, and if you’ve heard about the end times before, you’ve probably heard a lot of the hard things about it. Fear is a really easy one to see that, okay, yeah, it’s going to look different because a lot of crazy stuff is happening. It’s an easy one to grasp, at least a little bit. Every kid experiences fear, and we all know what we were afraid of when we were kids, and those memories stick with us.
I feel like this one more than any other emotion captures the fact that there’s a lot of fear in the end times, but the Lord can help us work through that and overcome, and it’s actually a sign of his goodness. That spread is my favorite because the picture and words really communicate a negative emotion in a positive light.
Your illustrator Philip Ortiz is fantastic. How did you find him, and then what was the process of working with him like?
For the illustrator component, I knew nothing. All I knew is that I’m a writer, I am not an illustrator [laughs], so I need someone to help me. During the beginning process, I considered everything. There are a lot more illustrators in general than there are Christian illustrators, and so I wondered, “Do I hire some super talented, unsaved person whose style I like because they’re easier to find?”
The more I prayed about it, the more I realized, NO, it has to be equal. The illustrations are telling as much of the story as, if not more than, my words. I’m providing the framework, the foundation, and then the illustrator is really providing all of the substance that kids are drawn to. I very quickly realized it needed to be a Christian doing my art.
Then I thought, “Oh, wait, since this is the end times and there’s so much disagreement about this theology, I need to have an illustrator who is on the same page as me with what we’re trying to communicate. We need to be unified and not constantly butting heads over interpretation. So it not only needs to be a Christian, but someone who’s tracking with the same ideas, has their heart involved in the story, and is living a life of prayer. IHOP! It needs to be someone up at IHOPKC.”
I went on a Facebook group of IHOPers that I was part of (I was plugged in at IHOPKC for a number of years) and just put out a call like, “I need help— children’s book author— need illustrator— help!” Within a day I had 15 or so different illustrators recommended to me. At that point I didn’t know any of them by name, so I had to just look at all their online portfolios. I liked Philip’s stuff, and so we had an initial phone call.
I’m so grateful for Philip because there’s so much to the process of printing a book that I didn’t have any idea how to do. Philip was not only an incredible illustrator who was in a life of prayer and going deep in the end times himself, but he had also done kids’ books before [such as The New Earth: You’re Gonna Love It by Kathi DeCanio]. He knew the process of how to take this project from beginning to end. He knew all the different steps and legal stuff and how to get a bar code and get it registered… I knew nothing of that! In the initial conversation he said, “I have a passion not just to be an illustrator but to help the author be successful.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes! I didn’t know I needed that, but now I’m convinced that I need your skills and wisdom!” And so all throughout the process, he really helped guide the project.
A book about the tribulation for kids is pretty niche. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like that before! Why do you think this topic is so important for kids?
One, because it’s not talked about anywhere. There are so few resources. God gave us the Bible to be helpful; it’s all profitable for teaching and instruction [2 Timothy 3:16], and so kids deserve to have resources about the end times. I believe, from the Word of God and what we see around us, that we’re getting close! Of course we don’t know exactly when Jesus is coming back, but we’re getting close. If Jesus is coming back soon, our kids are going to be the future leaders that I believe are going to go through a lot of this stuff.
Kids are like wet cement; they’re impressionable. If we start diving into the end times message now and sowing these seeds into them, we’re going to set them up to be future pastors or moms or small group leader or businessmen. Whether the return of Jesus is soon or further than we expect, whenever it is— if we can get the message in these kids now, that’s what we want.
And not just our kids, but I want our Christian families getting into new ideas about the tribulation. I want them wrestling through, like, “Is this in the Bible? This author/illustrator are trying to communicate that it is; what do I think? I’ve never talked to my children about this.” So I want to provide a resource that parents can wrestle through and have a way to easily engage their children in the end times message with the familiar format of a picture book.
I’m assuming this is kind of the mindset you have for your son, Cohen, at age two. How are you thinking about raising him in this message? Is the tribulation something you talk about with a two-year-old? How do you introduce him to this and raise him in this generation?
At age two, he reads this book and calls it “Daddy’s book”; he loves it. [Me: 😍] Obviously I’m just sowing seeds. If you can read this book to a seven-year-old and just put a hook in their heart, and they ask one question, like about the picture of an angel protecting kids— “What’s going on there, Daddy? Why do they need to be protected?”— in my mind that’s a win.
For Cohen, he’s just learning to talk, so for my kid I’m just thinking exposure. I want him to grow up having heard this stuff all his life. I constantly try to make it personal even to a two-year-old, like, “Hey, son, you’re going to be living through these things.” About the page with the angel on it, I’ll say, “Cohen, prayer is powerful. You see one of the girls is praying, and that’s why God sends the angel. Did you know that you can pray and God moves?” Even though he doesn’t talk back, even at the age of two I’m still sowing seeds.
What has been the response to this book from some of the families who have gotten their hands on it already?
It’s been fun. One of the most fun feedback points for me is from the parents or adults, and they’re reading it and saying, “I’m feeling God!” One of the reviews on Amazon said, “This really is a book not just for children but for families.” I think they’re right! It’s technically called a children’s book, but my aim was for family units. A three-year-old isn’t going to learn about the end times by themselves; their parents are going to help them, and so in my mind if the parents are getting touched, that’s where it all starts.
Another point of feedback is from families who have never even thought about the end times. Even some friends of mine who would say, “Yeah, I appreciate that but I believe a little different thing about the end times”— they’re getting the book into their hands and reading it to their kids. They’re engaging with the storyline, and even though they might not have theological clarity on all that’s going on, they’re excited to introduce their kids to different Bible verses and just start the conversation of, “What if…? I don’t know; let’s journey through this together.”
Do you have more ideas for books in the future?
Nothing currently. I tell the Lord, “Lord, I like writing; I’m not going to become a full-time author, but You gave me this idea and I’m open if You give me ideas in the future.” But I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll do more books in the future with the same heart, communicating Bible truths to kids in a way that’s powerful and that they can grasp. Children are the age that we need to be aiming at because, again, they’re wet cement, they’re impressionable. It wouldn’t surprise me if down the road there’s another idea that comes. The end times is such a rich topic, and even one specific portion of the end times or one nuanced detail about Jesus could easily be a children’s book. There’s more than enough material that the Lord could give ideas about, so I’m just waiting on Him to see what’s next.
Purchase The Boy in Two Places on Amazon.