On My Shelf helps you get to know various writers through a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers. I asked Betsy Childs Howard—author of Seasons of Waiting and several children’s books, including Arlo Takes Off—about what’s on her bedside table, her favorite fiction, the books she regularly revisits, and more. What’s on your nightstand right now? For my personal devotions, I’m reading through J. C. Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels. I’ve appreciated the modern-language version published by Evangelical Press, and Ryle’s commentary is helping me to think deeply about the practical implications of Jesus’s teaching for my own life. I think of Ryle as the Victorian version of Tim Keller because he knows how to preach to the heart. I’m also using Nancy Guthrie’s book I’m Praying for You to pray for a friend who is suffering. This is the second time I’ve used this book, and I highly recommend it. I think of Ryle as the Victorian version of Tim Keller because he knows how to preach to the heart. For bedtime reading I usually turn to a mystery from the British Library Crime Classics, a collection of republished works from the Golden Age of detective fiction. I’m currently reading The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley. While I go about my daily chores, I’m listening to the audiobook of The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. The true-crime plot is a little too creepy, but I’ve enjoyed the historical background of the Chicago World’s Fair. The older I get, the more freedom I feel to bail on a book or read only the portions that are worth my time! What are your favorite fiction books? I read mostly fiction, so rather than choose one favorite, I’ll break them into categories. British: Middlemarch by George Eliot, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen American: Peace like a River by Leif Enger Mystery: Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey Collective Work: Anthony Trollope. In my early 20s, I set myself the goal of reading all the novels of Anthony Trollope, which took me almost a decade. There’s no one novel by Trollope that I would call my favorite, but his books are a sort of literary comfort food for me. What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why? My childhood pastor encouraged everyone in our congregation to read one missionary biography in the lead-up to our missions conference, and missionary biographies have deeply shaped me. Some favorites are To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson by Courtney Anderson and all of Helen Roseveare’s autobiographical books. The autobiography I most often return to and recommend to others is Darlene Deibler Rose’s Evidence Not Seen. Whenever I am going through a hard time, thinking about all Rose endured helps me put my own trials in perspective. Evidence Not Seen is a powerful testimony of how God’s presence can be felt in times of suffering, as well as an example of how to walk by faith in times when God feels absent. What are some books you regularly reread and why? C. S. Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces had a profound impact on my faith when I read it as a teen, and it’s a book I always enjoy rereading. Lewis is a master of turning our post-Enlightenment assumptions on their heads. Every time I read it I find different things stand out. Till We Have Faces is not a hard book to read, but it is hard to understand. I highly recommend reading it with a group so you can grapple with the interpretation together! The Screwtape Letters is another Lewis classic that I return to repeatedly. It shines a light on my heart and helps me discern subtle ways the Tempter is influencing my thinking. I’m also a devotee of Elizabeth Prentiss’s fictionalized diary Stepping Heavenward [read TGC’s review]. I’ve read it in each of the different seasons of my life. What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel? When I was in my early 20s, I read Treasures of Faith: Living Boldly in View of God’s Promises by Chuck and Sharon Betters, and it had a profound effect on my own understanding of faith. The book is a slow unpacking of the familiar Old Testament stories that make up the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11. Yet after paying close attention to how the writer of Hebrews crystallizes each one in regard to faith, I gained a new understanding of what it means to believe not only that God exists, but that he “rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Heb. 11:6, NIV). If we live with a Hebrews 11 type of faith, we live with an eternal perspective. I would say that this eternal perspective is what I seek to cultivate in others through my writing and as a pastor’s wife. What’s one book you wish every pastor would read? I’d like to recommend a category rather than one book. I encourage all pastors to regularly read Christian biographies for the good to their own souls. There is something about becoming immersed in someone else’s story and watching the outworking of God’s plan for his or her life that gives perspective on one’s own life. Something about your ministry that seems hard may start to look like a blessing when compared to the challenges others have faced! And reading about the answers God gave to someone else’s prayers may encourage you to pray for your own ministry with more boldness. What’s your best piece of writing advice? I would say the biggest mistake Christians make when writing for children is they ignore the writing maxim “Show, don’t tell.” We don’t have to squeeze every Christian doctrine into one picture book, and we don’t have to spell out everything that a story implies. We don’t have to squeeze every Christian doctrine into one picture book or spell out everything that a story implies. If you want a book to teach children, I recommend focusing on one small idea and communicating it through what happens in the story, rather than through a lot of explanation. If you make the story compelling, its message will lodge in a child’s imagination. Conversely, if an author spends more time talking about what a story means than he does telling the story, the child will lose interest in both the story and its message. What are you learning about life and following Jesus? I am learning to enjoy the blessings and provision that God has given me today rather than obsessing about what tomorrow holds. Our family is in a waiting season where the future is unclear. I would like to know where we will be living and what we will be doing a year from now, but I don’t. (Of course, no one really knows what his or her life will hold a year from now, but some of us are in circumstances that make us aware of that.) While I wouldn’t have chosen instability or an unknown future, I am grateful that God is using those things to make me more dependent on him and more willing to trust my future to his providence. As our TGC Kids series comes to a close with Arlo Takes Off, what are you most proud of as the series editor and contributor yourself? I mostly feel grateful rather than proud to have watched this series come to fruition and make its way into the imaginations of so many families. Writing a story and then watching a talented illustrator bring it to life is an experience of grace. Seeing TGC Kids translated into different languages—holding a copy of a book I wrote translated into a language I will never speak—feels like unmerited favor. And enjoying the books with my own children and integrating the truth of those stories into our conversations has been a gift.