Tomie dePaola's The Parables of Jesus (1987) is the most widely used illustrated retelling of the parables for young children produced in the twentieth century and a significant contribution to the tradition of biblical illustration for pre-readers. DePaola was a Caldecott Honor artist and prolific children's book author - best known for Strega Nona and his autobiographical Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs - who brought to biblical subjects the same warm, flat-perspective illustration style and accessible prose that characterized his secular work.
The book retells seventeen of Jesus's parables - including the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9), the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7), the Mustard Seed (Matthew 13:31-32), and the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) - in prose simple enough for a four-year-old to follow while remaining faithful to the essential content of each story. Each retelling is accompanied by full-page illustrations in dePaola's characteristic style: bold outlines, warm colors, simplified landscapes, and figures with large expressive eyes and gentle faces.
Mark 4:34 - 'He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything' - is the text that implicitly grounds the book's rationale. Jesus himself used story as his primary pedagogical method, drawing on images from everyday agricultural and domestic life - seeds and soil, lost coins and searching women, wayward sons and waiting fathers - to communicate realities that resist more direct statement. DePaola's project is to show that these stories can be communicated to the youngest readers through the combination of simplified prose and expressive image.
Luke 15:20 - 'But while he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him' - receives special visual attention in dePaola's illustration of the Prodigal Son: the running father, the tattered son, the embrace. For children who cannot yet follow theological argument, the visual enactment of unconditional welcome communicates something essential about the parables' picture of God.
Luke 10:36 - 'Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?' - is the question at the heart of the Good Samaritan, and dePaola renders it visually through a sequence of images that shows the contrast between those who pass by and the one who stops: Samaritan reaching down to the wounded man, placing him on the donkey, bringing him to the inn. The visual sequence makes the ethical point accessible without requiring theological vocabulary.
Matthew 13:8 - the fruitful soil that produces 'some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty' - closes the Parable of the Sower with an image of abundance that dePaola renders through golden fields and overflowing grain, giving young readers an image of the generosity of the kingdom of God.
DePaola was a committed Catholic, and the book reflects a Catholic sacramental sensibility: the parables are not primarily moral lessons but windows onto the character of a God who searches for the lost, welcomes the returning, and works mysteriously through the small and hidden. The book has been used in Catholic religious education programs, Protestant Sunday schools, and interfaith contexts, finding a readership broader than any single denominational tradition.
DePaola followed The Parables of Jesus with similar treatments of Mary (1995), the miracles of Jesus (1987), and the book of Christmas (1988), creating a miniature illustrated biblical library for young children. Tomie dePaola died in 2020 after a fall, leaving behind over two hundred books and a legacy of making religious and cultural stories visually accessible to the youngest readers.
DePaola was a committed Catholic, and the book reflects a Catholic sacramental sensibility: the parables are not primarily moral lessons but windows onto the character of a God who searches for the lost, welcomes the returning, and works mysteriously through the small and hidden. The book has been used in Catholic religious education programs, Protestant Sunday schools, and interfaith contexts, finding a readership broader than any single denominational tradition. Its success demonstrated that children's literature could engage the deepest theological content of the Gospel without reducing it to moralism or making it intellectually inaccessible.
DePaola followed The Parables of Jesus with similar treatments of Mary (1995), the miracles of Jesus (1987), and the book of Christmas (1988), creating a miniature illustrated biblical library for young children. Tomie dePaola died in 2020 after a fall, leaving behind over two hundred books and a legacy of making religious and cultural stories visually accessible to the youngest readers. His contribution to children's religious education - the demonstration that the warmth and accessibility of good children's illustration can serve theological depth rather than merely decorating it - remains his most enduring gift to the tradition of Christian formation.
His contribution to children's religious education - the demonstration that the warmth and accessibility of good children's illustration can serve theological depth rather than merely decorating it - remains his most enduring gift to the tradition of Christian formation. The Parables of Jesus is the work in which dePaola's artistic gifts and his Catholic faith were most fully integrated, and it is aevidence that the parables Jesus told to crowds on Galilean hillsides can still reach the youngest readers, given a translator with the right combination of skill and devotion.