The Loud Crash

3 Years: “Are you going to get me the children’s book about the Loud Crash?”

Questions about how we got here, and where we came from, dominate every childhood. Curiosity knows no limits of religion (or lack thereof) and doesn’t exclude itself to children whose families do, or don’t, believe in a literal and biblical account of creation. Children, no matter their background, all reach an age when they want to know how this massive, beautiful, seemingly impossible universe came into being.

I am a deeply spiritual person and I consider my beliefs to a core part of who I am as an individual. However, I don’t believe literally in an anthropomorphic creator-God who sculpted the cosmos with his hands or his words. I believe in science, I believe in skepticism, and I believe in giving kids real answers instead of pleasant or optimistic fables.

That’s why, even before my daughter was old enough to ask, I went to the effort of making sure we had books that reflected our family’s cultural, religious, and philosophical beliefs. Just as no creationist would dare have a home without a Bible, I wouldn’t dare have a home without plenty of reference material for when my daughter asked me those challenging questions.

I was looking through several books that explain a secular, or at least non-literal, account of the genesis of the universe. Among them was one book that later turned out to be my daughter’s favorite: “Born with a Bang,” in which the narrator, speaking from the perspective of the universe, explains how our world came to be. It gives a detailed but child-friendly explanation of the Big Bang in a way that makes sense to almost all kids over toddler-age, but can continue to capture the attention of much older children (or even adults, if they’re not afraid to admit to enjoying a picture book)!

Little did I know that, while I was on the phone with a friend talking about my mission to find a good children’s book about the Big Bang, my inquisitive three-year-old was listening closely. Not long later, she came to me and asked when this book about the “Loud Crash” would be arriving. I suppose that, no matter how deep or scientific I want to be about it, a three-year-old doesn’t know much difference between a big bang and a loud crash.