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God, Love, and Family
Marion, Faith & Ice Cream follows an eight-year-old’s simple question about believing in God as it unfolds across one day, where family love, sensory wonder, and everyday beauty teach her how to see faith for herself. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration was my daughter’s family. The gift of becoming a grandparent is being able to view the development of a child from 30 thousand feet. As a parent, you are in the thick of the day-to-day duties and responsibilities, but as a grandparent, your experience allows you to see what really matters. Therefore, God, love, and family are the central elements.
How did you balance writing about faith for children in a way that feels gentle and discovered?
Thank you for asking the question this way. Children are so much more sensory-focused than intuitive, so it was important to me to connect the faith to something they can observe with their own senses. The unseen concepts of air and wind are ones children understand, so drawing the connection gives them a tangible connection to believing versus simply a spiritual one.
Marion’s father, being a scientist, adds an interesting dimension to the story. What drew you to pairing scientific observation with spiritual belief?
My son-in-law is an MD, so pairing a science angle that relies on “proof” with a child’s desire for something concrete seemed like a natural fit.
What do you hope children, and the adults reading with them, feel or talk about after they finish the book?
That God is calling us all to take a leap of faith. I think we all have a deep yearning to believe in something beyond what we can see. Therefore, I hope it gives children (and maybe even some adults) the simple framework to connect this tangible world with the spiritual one.
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Marion isn’t sure. She’s eight years old, full of questions, and she’s never seen God. So how can she know He’s real?
Everything changes during one breezy Saturday. As she watches eagles glide above her, leaves swirl around the yard, and delights in a sparkling lake that seems to wink at her, Marion discovers that the world is filled with things she can’t see but still knows are true. And, maybe faith works the same way…
A beautiful picture book that helps children explore faith, family connections, and the amazing wonders all around us. With loving guidance from her dad, Marion learns that belief is so much more than just what meets the eye.
Marion, Faith & Ice Cream
Marion, Faith & Ice Cream follows an eight-year-old girl through a single sunlit Saturday that begins with a sincere nighttime question: how can she believe in God if she’s never seen Him? By the end of the next day, after leaf piles blown apart by wind, a bald eagle riding unseen air, a sparkling lake that seems to wink, and the small glory of a chocolate-vanilla swirl cone from the Snack Shack, Marion arrives at an answer that feels less imposed than discovered. It’s a very simple book in structure, but its simplicity is the point. It takes a child’s doubt seriously, then answers it through sensation, family intimacy, and the quiet accumulation of ordinary wonder.
What I liked most is the book’s gentleness. It doesn’t treat Marion’s question as disobedience or something to be brushed aside. Instead, her father meets it with patience, and that emotional steadiness gives the story its real center. I found that genuinely touching. The best moments are the ones where the idea of faith is grounded in lived experience rather than preached abstractly: the cool breeze you can feel but not see, the eagle borne by invisible air, the lake “winking” in the evening light, the children instinctively answering that they can feel love even when they can’t point to it. Those scenes have a softness to them that lingers. There’s a lovely domestic warmth here too, in the bedtime routines, the sibling teasing over the scattered leaves, the teddy bear tucked close, the almost comically important perfection of the swirl cone. The book understands that for children, the sacred often arrives tangled up with the sensory and the everyday.
I also think the writing succeeds best when it leans into that warmth and concrete imagery, though it’s not equally graceful on every page. Some lines are direct, but even there, the book’s heart is evident, and for a picture book aimed at young children, the clarity makes sense. I liked the way science and belief are placed beside one another. Marion’s father is a scientist, and the story uses observation, weather, birds, and motion to build its spiritual argument. I appreciated that. It gives the book a thoughtful little hinge: faith here isn’t framed as the opposite of curiosity, but as something a curious child can approach through the world she already loves.
The artwork is glossy, bright, and instantly inviting, with the kind of polished, big-eyed charm that recalls contemporary animated family films. Its colorful palette and soft, rounded character designs give the book a cheerful, Disney-Pixar-like warmth that makes every page feel sunny, gentle, and easily gets a child’s attention.
I found Marion, Faith & Ice Cream sweet in the true sense of the word: tender, earnest, and a little wistful, with enough specificity to keep it from floating away into sentimentality. I’d recommend it for families who want a gentle, faith-forward picture book that opens space for children’s questions, especially those who like stories where belief is discovered in the textures of a day rather than handed down as a rule. It left me with the feeling that the book’s real subject isn’t only God, but the quiet way love teaches a child how to see.
Pages: 32 | ASIN: B0GBP2R1N2
