The Little House in Heaven is a lovely story about a young girl named Melissa Green who enters another world where she learns about Jesus. What she learns of Jesus there Melissa applies to her ordinary life in an English village. The full story sees Melissa attend church for the first time in her life, learn about the love and forgiveness of Jesus, grow in her faith in Him, deal with temptation, see the answer to her prayers, make friends with unlikely people, and understand the importance of obedience and listening to her conscience.
Author, Kathleen Watson, uses the motif of a picture of a house built on a rock as Melissa’s entry point into the other world. This motif is carried throughout the story and is used as a tool to teach a number of Christian principles. One of those principles is the wonderful news that believers in Jesus will each have their own mansions in heaven, an image which both opens and closes the book.
Other important Christian principles are spelt out using Bible verses, many of them explained to the protagonist by the character of Jesus himself.
Watson intersects Melissa’s imaginative world with the character’s real one in an effort to make Jesus and the Christian faith tangible for the reader. The Little House in Heaven is thus a sort of modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress.
The writing is simple enough for middle grade children to understand and the passage of time is well handled. Characters, from Miss Amy Light upstairs, to Rufus next door, to Melissa’s mother and grandparents are gently drawn and have just enough depth to be interesting.
Whilst adults will not likely struggle to understand the difference between Christian teaching and Watson’s vehicle for telling it, it could be confusing for children. As a caveat, therefore, to Watson’s story: adults would need to explain the important difference between a mere imaginative world and the real yet intangible one of the Christian faith.
The Little House in Heaven is available for purchase on eBay or from the author, blue4flower@yahoo.co.uk.
a feast of tales 