'It is very important to expose children as early as possible to the Bible'

Having blogged recently about a lovely illustrated book for young children titled God the Father’s Loving Plan, designed to introduce them to the Bible, I have caught up with its author, Jean Ann Sharpe and its illustrator, Roseanne Sharpe, her daughter. In that earlier blog I admitted that as a cradle Catholic I had not grown up with Bible stories. What is Jean Ann’s own faith background?

She tells me that she grew up as part of the Swedish Baptist Church, an evangelical denomination brought to the US from Sweden by immigrants in the early 20th century. “Within this close-knit church family of the 1950s and 60s, I regularly attended Sunday School, the Sunday morning service, a Sunday evening service and Wednesday night Girls Missionary Guild. There were also summer Bible camps and vacation Bible schools”, she recollects.