I Don't Know, Let's Find Out

"Where did God come from?"

It is twenty past nine. The lights are off. You have about four seconds.

Every book in this category is written for the child. This one is written for you - the person who has to open their mouth and produce a sentence, without warning, usually while tired, and often about something you have not thought about since you were their age.

FIFTY-SIX QUESTIONS. THREE PAGES EACH. WORDS YOU CAN ACTUALLY SAY.

For every question:

- WHAT THEY ARE ACTUALLY ASKING - because "what happens when you die" is very often "are you going to die", and if you answer the wrong one it lands as a change of subject

- THE FIRST THING TO DO - before any content at all

- WHAT TO SAY AT ABOUT 5, AT ABOUT 8, AT ABOUT 11 - the actual words, at three different lengths

- WHAT NOT TO SAY - three specific sentences and exactly what each one costs you

- WHERE CHRISTIANS DIFFER - whether this is agreed everywhere or genuinely divides them, and who is on which side

- ONE KING JAMES VERSE, printed in full, never repeated across the fifty-six

THE PART NO OTHER BOOK DOES

Almost every children's book about God picks one church's answers and presents them as simply Christianity. It is done for the best of reasons. And then the child grows up, meets a sincere Christian who was taught the opposite from the same Bible, and concludes that somebody was lying to them.

This book names the twelve real dividing lines - baptism, communion, predestination, faith and works, church authority, Scripture and tradition, which books belong, how the Bible is true, the end times, purgatory, Mary, the gifts of the Spirit - explains each side fairly, and gives you a sentence to say. A child who can name twelve dividing lines has a map. A child who has been told there is one Christian answer has a wall, and walls fall over in one piece.

ALSO INSIDE

- THE METHOD - six rules in ten pages, and an emergency card for when there is no time to look anything up

- WHAT CHANGES AT 5, 8, 11 AND 14 - how the questions themselves change shape

- FIFTY SENTENCES TO RETIRE - every damaging phrase in the book, gathered in one place, with why

- TEN SENTENCES WORTH HAVING READY - the opposite list, short enough to produce under pressure

- IF A CHILD TELLS YOU SOMETHING SERIOUS - what to do in the first two minutes, and who to contact

- All 56 verses collected, a 48-word glossary, and an honest page on what this book has and has not verified

FOR THE ADULT WHO HAS SAID "LET ME GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT"

Parents. Grandparents. Godparents. Sunday school teachers. Anybody who has ever answered a nine-year-old confidently and then quietly wondered whether it was true.

No activities. No craft. No object lessons requiring an egg. Nothing to print, cut out or buy. It is a book of sentences, because sentences are what the situation actually calls for.

And no fear anywhere in it. There is no frightening description of hell, no guilt used as leverage, and no presentation of unquestioning obedience as a virtue - the book says plainly why that last one is dangerous, and includes a full page on what to do if a child discloses something about an adult.