Wonderful Storytellers: Bob Hartman

I'm finding myself loving good storytellers these days, especially those who are particularly adept at retelling old stories in ways that make us hear them anew. Storytellers and writers who manage fresh but faithful re-tellings of Bible stories are at the top of my list, inspiring me to want to dive again into some Bible story re-tellings myself this summer.

I thought I'd introduce a couple of my favorite Bible storytellers here. And I thought I'd start with Bob Hartman.

He currently lives and writes in England, but he used to live in our area, and I had the privilege of attending a storytelling workshop he did at our seminary about a dozen years ago. As much as I enjoyed it then, I had no idea how much his books would come to mean to our family, and especially to my daughter. She loves his stories and could listen to them by the hour. She doesn't mind listening to them over and over, which is a good thing because I find myself wanting to read them over and over, since they lend themselves readily to repeated readings and tellings.

Our all-time Hartman favorite is probably Early Saints of God, a collection of saint stories from the first several hundred years of the church. We read it during the month of November every year, as a way of celebrating All Saints. Just lately, however, we've been reading and re-reading Angels, Angels All Around, a wonderful collection of Bible stories involving angels. Based on Biblical accounts, and on the marvelous diversity of God's creation, Hartman decided to make each angel unique and especially suited to its particular calling, which makes the stories shine with creativity.

Thus the angel who ministers to the despairing prophet Elijah in the desert is a maternal, spoon-wielding angel in an apron, whose recipe for cake is...well, heavenly. The angel who holds up a sword in Balaam's path is properly fierce, and practically rolls his eyes at the stubborn, donkey-ish behavior of the prophet. The angel who slips into prison to rescue Peter is a slender, boyish imp with a mischievous grin (think Peter Pan or Puck) who doesn't mind at all pulling a fast one on the jailers. The angel who ministers life to Hagar and Ishmael in the desert comes in the guise of a vulture (who drives all the real death-preying birds away). The angel in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego has a literally blazing smile and fiery-bright hair. The angel who answers Daniel's prayer and shuts the mouths of the lion's in the den is himself large and leonine, able to distract and wrestle with big cats. And Gabriel's visit to Mary -- well, it's full of surprises, mostly because the young girl is not at all like the angel expects.

Those are just a few of our favorites from the book -- there are several more stories we love too!

What I enjoy about Hartman's saint and Bible stories is the way he manages to sustain attention and interest, through creative uses of repetition and appropriate bits of humor, but how he always manages to hone in on an important truth about God's nature and character. You can tell this is a man who has wrestled, lovingly and faithfully, with the stories he's presenting. We love these stories and we learn from them too.

Hartman has also written a number of folk story and animal story re-tellings. We love his Lion Storyteller Bible and The Lion Storyteller Christmas Book (some re-tellings of the nativity, but also some stories based on traditional Christmas folktales from around the world). And I was really excited to find out that he has a new collection forthcoming, Mr. Aesop's Story Shop, based on the ancient stories of Aesop. I discovered that through this brief but very good online interview someone did with him this past spring. He talks there about the art of storytelling and also mentions some other exciting projects he has in the works, including a book he described as "Tom Wright for 8 year olds." I can't wait!