The Bible for Kids Podcast - S8Ep9: Pray Pals: When we Pray, What do we Say?

Christian Parenting

Welcome to the Bible for Kids Podcast with your hosts, author Trisha Goyer and author

and co-creator of Veggy Tales, Mike Nuroki.

If instilling biblical values and kids is important to you, this podcast will give you the

resources, wisdom and hope to do just that.

Now let's join our hosts, Trisha and Mike, for this week's episode.

Welcome back to the Bible for Kids Podcast.

I'm Trisha Goyer.

And I'm Mike Nuroki.

Trisha and I have the pleasure of welcoming the creative team behind the new book series,

Pray Pals, and it's a mother-son combination of Jonathan Hooper and Christi Hooper.

And they're here to talk about their new book when we pray, what do we say?

And like always, we'd like to start every Bible for Kids Podcast with a Bible verse,

so Mike.

Okay.

Now, I hope I don't mess this up because I have this in my brain as the King James version.

Okay.

Don't even look at our show notes, Mike.

Just say it.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Here we go.

Pray like this.

Our Father in Heaven, may your name be kept holy.

May your kingdom come soon.

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today the food we need and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who

sin against us.

And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

All right.

I did it.

I did it.

You didn't say your memorizing one.

That's right.

Exactly.

Maybe Larry needs to say the memorizing.

Exactly.

Larry Praeson, King James, Larry Praeson, but this is such a perfect for us for today.

So Jonathan Hooper is a designer and writer with a love of theology and a heart for serving

the church through technology and creativity.

He's the co-founder of Valora, a smart Bible app, and by night, he performed as a jazz pianist

which is so cool.

Oh, wow.

He lives near Cleveland, Ohio with his wife Lauren and her three girls.

And Christie Hooper is a wife, mother and grandmother, and the creator of the Pray Pals

characters.

As a graphic designer, illustrator and photographer, her work has appeared on many

products, including for focus on the family and American greetings.

She lives in Hudson, Ohio, where her passion is teaching young children about Jesus in

prayer.

So welcome, Jonathan and Christie.

We would just love to hear what's happening in your neck of the wood.

So Christie, why don't we just start with you?

Oh, sure.

Thank you so much.

And thank you for that scripture.

That was really perfect for our book.

And just really gets me excited about our new book that we're so excited to share with

you.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for having us.

It's great to be with you.

Oh, my goodness.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Well, before we jump into the book, can you tell us a little bit more about how Pray Pals

came about?

What sparked the idea for these characters, Christie?

Yeah.

So that would be definitely for me because these characters, I started brainstorming

literally 25 years ago.

Wow.

So that's a long time ago.

So it's, um, I could give you a long story or a short story because it's been a lot

of years, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'll give you more of the short story.

Um, I think I was originally compelled to come up with these characters about the time

when I have three sons.

So Jonathan's the oldest and Colin is our middle son and Ryan is our youngest.

And I remember when they were about, I'd say Jonathan was eight or nine and Colin was

five or six.

And then Ryan was still in diapers.

He loves me for me to say that.

Um, so they were kind of at that age where they're starting to, you know, they're at school,

they're starting to venture out, they're going on play dates.

And I know that's not realistic, but when your children or babies for some reason, you feel

a little bit like you have more control.

I know that's not true, but for me, that's the way it is.

And I've talked to other moms who feel this way.

So I was kind of getting into that stage where I felt just a little more anxious and vulnerable

about them going to school on their own and being out in the world a little bit.

And so I kind of was thinking about that.

And about that same time, coincidentally, I went up to say goodnight to the boys.

And I remember specifically what I went into my son, Colin, my middle son's room.

And we I knelt down to pray with him, which I tried to do with him each night if I could.

And I remember he said mom, because sometimes I think about what would happen if something

happened to you, like even if you died, and he said, and I I cry, and I cry, he said,

I can't stop crying.

And it just melted my heart.

And I remember normally I would have said, oh, no, no, don't worry, we'll just pray

about that.

And let's not worry about that kind of thing.

But for some reason, because I had already been I was a little anxious too about whether

I would always be there for them, I said, well, if that did happen, if something happened

to me, and I couldn't be with you.

It would be like the one thing that you think that I would want most for you, that would

be your most important thing in your life.

What would be the main thing if I weren't there?

And he said, to get my stuff done, and I'm like, what, to get, oh man, no, I'm like to

get your stuff done.

And it was just a real aha moment for me, because I remember thinking, wow, I have been a

successful mom, nag.

I have not been successful, but you know, at teaching him what's the main thing.

And so it was really at that moment where I felt compelled to come up with a creative

way to teach the boys how to have a real lasting, trusting, careful relationship with Jesus.

And so that's kind of where it started in a nutshell.

And then there's much more after that, but that definitely would give you the introduction

I would think.

That's wonderful.

Yeah.

And Jonathan, how did you get roped in?

Yeah.

Well, I'm the oldest of my other two younger brothers.

And I grew up, of course, as many did in my generation with these characters called Veggie

Tales.

I don't know if you heard of them.

I don't know.

But unlike other kids in my generation, I also grew up with these characters called the

Prate Pals, because my mom had come up with these characters as a way of helping teach

my brothers and I as well as some of the kids in our church classes, how to pray.

And so my mom would make puppet shows.

And as I was older than the younger kids, I would help her write some of the shows and

write some of the scripts, the scripts and the various creative things that mom would

do with these Prate Pals.

She would bake cookies that looked like the Prate Pals.

And so I just feel like I've grown up with them.

And they're just a part of the family.

And so when she came to me a couple of years ago and had this idea to revive the Prate

Pals, and maybe see if we could reach a broader audience with them and refresh the stories,

I was really excited because I've always enjoyed creative writing, especially poetry and

this sort of thing.

And it's not what I do professionally in terms of, my background is mainly in graphic

design, but I've also worked on church staffs, as communications director, and so I've

done some writing in that.

And I love theology, as you mentioned.

I love reading old theology books.

And so the opportunity to infuse that with creative writing, with these characters that

I have grown up with, and I've seen the way they've benefited me personally as a child

growing up in my relationship with God, and now having been able to see how they're

already benefiting my own kids.

And my brother's kids, the grandchildren generation of the Prate Pals, as my mom has shared

them with them as well, I just couldn't be more excited to be involved in the project

and bringing them to life for broader, for even more families to enjoy.

I love that.

So let's talk a little bit about the characters, Poppy, Rainy, Erie, and Yessie, is that

Dice Pranel's damn right?

Yes.

Yes, I see me like, talk about why you chose these specific characters and how do they help

teach the different elements of prayer?

You know, I definitely remember coming up with them and I'll give you a little bit of

a backstory.

So as I was praying about trying to come up with a way to teach my sons to pray in a more

accurate or theological way, or I right away thought of, obviously you go with what Jesus,

how Jesus taught us to pray, right?

And how blessed are we that Jesus taught us how to pray?

Where would we be if we didn't have the Lord's Prayer?

So that was definitely where I wanted to start.

Well then, just as God does everything, I just praying about it happened to be at the

Rec Center one day, exercising nets to this gal, when this was already on my heart and

we started chatting and we realized that she was a freelance writer for focus on the family

and I was a freelance illustrator and we thought, wow, what a coincidence, you know what

this is?

What exactly?

Exactly.

I'm like, how could this be?

Jesus has got to be an answer to prayer and she had been praying probably about something

very similar to and she also had worked for the National Day of Prayer and she had been

on staff with them and she was very familiar with her publications.

So we got together, we put our heads together and I remember one specific day, we met at

Borders bookstore and we did that drop in pray where we dropped down on the ground and

this was more something that she did more comfortably than I did.

Stop me.

Stop dropping pray like they tell you to do when there's a fire.

Yeah, and it was a little different for me and I was like, oh, I don't know, I haven't

done this but that's how she lived and that's how she lived her life and I was so blessed

to run into her and we became great friends and we used to love it.

So we put our heads together and in the Christian book aisle and sat on the floor and prayed,

we want to do something together because we feel like we have some talent and some energy

and such and we each had boys and anyway, so it was really that where we started thinking

about the four themes of the Lord's Prayer, the praise, repent, ask and yield and I do

remember discussing at one point in the beginning we were thinking about dinosaur characters

because between the two of us we had five songs.

We talked about that but then I started thinking, well, prayers go up in the air and you send

your praises, little children, they're praying and they're thinking of their praises going

up in the air and so they definitely I think should be characters that are in the air.

So I started thinking of prayer, PR, AIR and for a while I had them named prayer pals.

So definitely that's where it came up with the four actual characters, Poppy Rainey,

Erie and Yessie came to me in one sitting within a few minutes.

I was sitting on my couch and I remember just thinking, well, how about Poppy, the bubble?

He was a he now and our book he will be a she but he was more, he was kind of like an old

man type character like a wise type character, really poly guy, you know, kind of guy.

And he was he was bursting with praise.

He had so much praise, he didn't know what to do and he was afraid he was going to pop.

So the other characters had to say, Poppy, Poppy, get your praises out, you're going to

pop, get them out, get them out.

So that was kind of like his, you know, his bio guess.

And then for Rainey repent, I thought of a rain cloud because what better type of character

for repent than a cloud that can be gray and can also be white and fluffy, right?

And he can also cry tears of lament when he's repenting.

So that's where Rainey came from.

I kind of pictured him like an ER character kind of a guy that's a little big for his age,

a little bit insecure, but he's got a good heart and he's trying to do the right thing.

But sometimes he gets jealous and sometimes he, you know, actually starts to storm and

and scares people and then he realizes, oh, no, I've made a mistake and he has to learn

to repent.

And then when he does, he gets light and fluffy again.

He's a white, it becomes like a white cloud.

And then for, yeah, for Erie, Erie is a little balloon and I pictured her as like a little

three-year-old girl.

So she's full of questions like what three-year-old child is not like asking constantly and Jonathan

can tell you because his youngest is three and they never stop talking and they never stop

asking questions.

And so that's kind of the idea for Erie.

But it wasn't really until more recently that I realized that this could even, she could

even go deeper because Erie is, she's full of air and but she doesn't know, she's too

young to know what's in her.

And let's just like we are full of the Holy Spirit, but we can't see it.

It's hard to understand, but we have to ask every day, give us this day our daily bread,

give us the Holy Spirit, give us what sustains us, what keeps us going.

And so that's kind of the Erie's little story is she's always asking questions, but she's

always saying, and make sure I stay up in the air because I don't understand this, you

know?

So sustain me.

And then for Jesse, he's kind of like every group of characters needs a little devious

one, right?

Now that was originally what I thought, but in our book, he's not quite that way, but he's

more of like a teenager dude guy.

And he wants to fly as high as he can in the air in the sky because he wants everyone

to see him and he wants everybody to think he's the coolest dude around.

So he wants to get as high as he can, but then suddenly the wind may stop and he'll fall

and break his frame and realize that he wasn't really, it wasn't about him, right?

It was about God and what he's doing to lead him.

So he has to realize to yield to God and that he's always attached to a string, whether

he likes it or not, but that's actually a good thing.

And he has to learn kind of the hard way that that's actually a good thing.

So he prays that kingdom come, I will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and that's

where we get the yield.

So that's basically the characters, the way I was thinking of them in a nutshell.

Yeah, that's a great, well, and you know, just following that acronym, it's just so easy

for kids to remember that and to visualize that.

So I love that.

And we're going to get into, after the break, we'll get into diving into a little bit more

about how the book is structured, but we're going to take a short break and we'll be right

back on the Bible for kids.

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Welcome back to the Bible for Kids, Mike and I are here with Jonathan and Kristi Hooper.

We're talking about the Pray Characters, P-R-A-Y, and the book is centered around the P-R-A-Y

method, which if you break that down, is Pray's, Repent, Ask, and Yeild, and it occurred to

me, you know, like I've used something called the Axe method before, and it's like this

is just easier words to remember.

I know.

I know.

I know, yeah.

Adoration, confession, Thanksgiving, and supplication.

Those are all really hard words.

Let's just go with P-R-A-Y, just pull out the easier synonyms.

How is the book and this concept pattern around the Lord's Prayer?

Yeah.

Well, of course, we didn't come up with the P-R-A-Y pattern, but we did recognize that

it actually maps on to the Lord's Prayer quite nicely, so the Lord's Prayer is actually

book-ended with praise, starts with our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, as

you read earlier, and then ends with, at least in Matthew's account, it ends with your

kingdom come and ascribing kingdom power and glory to God in this celebration of praise.

And then in the middle, you have yielding, that I will be done, you have asking, give

us the stair daily bread, as well as asking for other needs and types of ways that God

can bless others, and then there's repentance, and forgive us our trespasses, as well as

lamentation for the way syn is impacted the whole world, those who sin against us, deliver

us from evil, so it deals with the syn that's within our own hearts, as well as outside

of us that's impacting us, and the Lord's Prayer is shown in the book.

If you skim through it, you'll see it four times after each of the four characters are

introduced, and each time a different line is emphasized.

And so I think that's helpful for parents and caretakers, readers, because you can pray

through it every time if you want to, if you have enough time, and if your child is patient

enough, and that helps with memorization, because you'll read through the Lord's Prayer

four times for the one book reading, but you can also skip over that without guilt if

you're not a time head, if you want to make sure you don't mess up the reading of the

NLT, if you want to go read about King James version stuck in your head.

Right, yes, because kids can just enjoy it as a story as well, so that's our thinking

behind it.

I love how you have that foundation of the Lord's Prayer, and I think we kind of get

away from memorization, and why do you think it's important for kids to learn the Lord's

Prayer at a young age?

Yeah, I think it's important to memorize it, of course, for all Christians, but it's

also important to really internalize it, because it teaches us the whole gospel, and the

whole Christian life is wrapped up in the Lord's Prayer.

You recognize your need for a Savior, repent of sin, you receive Christ as your King and

rest on him for salvation, you trust him to supply all your needs, and then you glorify

him with thankful praise forever.

And if that's all summed up right there in the Lord's Prayer, and what a gift that Jesus

gave it to us in that way, as a model, not only to teach us how to pray, but as an expression

of the whole Christian life.

So that's why it's so central, and it's something that you don't really ever move away from.

You just continue going deeper into those core principles of being a Christian and communing

with God.

And I would have to say, too, that even for adults, I use the PRAY sometimes just to keep

my focus on the same thing, because I tend to be creative in my brain when I'm praying,

I go, well, I'm all over the map, so to speak.

And it just is a really nice way to just keep you focused on the right themes, and also

you can be confident that if you do pray those themes, you have prayed the way Jesus taught

us to pray, right?

Right.

So I think that's important.

That's great.

Well, and the book invites kids to pause and pray together while reading.

And so can you talk a little bit about why it's important for kids to learn to pray their

own thoughts?

So the liturgy and recitation is also really beautiful, but talk a little bit about learning

to pray your own thoughts.

Yeah.

Of course, we've all experienced top prayer can become rote, and I love reading pre-written

prayers, like the Valley of Vision, or just praying through the Psalms, and that can be

wonderful.

But we also have to be on guard against just formalism and just going through the motions.

And particularly for kids, when they realize that prayer is not just us reciting something,

even when they listen to their parents pray, they might think that we're just reciting

something, or certain scripts, we're just sort of doing this routine.

But when they realize, no, they can actually bring their own thoughts in their own words,

no matter how simple, and express their feelings to God and their ideas and petitions around

the framework of the Lord's Prayer, then they get a sense that prayer is a real conversation.

And it has to come from the heart.

And that's something that I love the Puritans, and they were always very concerned about

keeping the heart and making sure that our affections for God are strong and that we're

not just falling into those formalistic patterns.

And so that's what we're excited about with the pre-piles is that, yes, you're learning

the exalted language of scripture in the Lord's Prayer itself, which is wonderful.

But you're also just getting these, the characters themselves help you to remember and internalize

what you're actually expressing through those petitions of the Lord's Prayer.

Yeah, and how important relationship is in all of that.

Right.

I love the balance of it because it's like fiction and fun, but it has like engaging rhymes

and colorful illustrations, but then the gospel is a center.

Like, we want kids to understand the gospel.

And my God has given us, and we don't ways to pray it back.

Why was that important for you guys to keep the gospel at the center of this book?

Yes, that's really important.

There was one of our concerns with reaching out to publishers.

We thought, well, even if we get a big publisher that's interested, that would be great.

But what if they want to sort of make it more broad,

theologically, and just appeal to a broader audience, make it less explicitly Christian?

Well, that's what we've loved about the Good Book Company, is they've really pushed it in

the direction of centering it on Jesus, making it clearly gospel-centered.

And my favorite part of the book is after you go through and meet all the characters,

you learn why we pray in Jesus' name, and that I found these to actually be the hardest

stances to write, because I'm writing them in the Limerick style, and I'm trying to convey

the theology of Christ as our high priest, interceding, and making things like that.

Oh, I'm sure he's on the top of your head, Sharon.

Yes, I guess.

Our wife was a man from Nazareth.

But I think it came out well.

I said, in all the prayers we pray, Paul's prayer, there's one thing that's

the same. Each time we pray in any way, we pray in Jesus' name.

Jesus is the one who brings our words to Heaven's throne.

The Father hears the smallest prayers we pray through Christ alone.

And I thought that was really important to include, so that children learned that Jesus is the

reason why we can have this wonderful, prayerful relationship with our Heavenly Father,

and that it's not just a sentimental thing, it's not just positive thinking,

you know, talking to the God you hope is there.

No, you're talking to your Heavenly Father that you know is there

through Jesus who isn't Heaven now seated at His right hand, making those prayers acceptable.

That's really, I think, what's so exciting about the books to me is I can see age two all the way

up to older people, you know, older age, because there's just so many facets to it,

and there's activities and things.

So I think it's just it's the type of book that I'm hoping will, you know,

even the caretakers and parents will want to read over and over,

because there's so much to learn in them.

Wonderful. Well, it is time for a break, so we'll take a short break and we'll be right back

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Welcome back to the Bible For Kids.

Mike and I are here with Jonathan and Kristi Hooper.

So I remember back to the time when my kids were really little.

They're in their mid 20s now, but just praying.

And pretty much with my son, who was very fidgety,

and he tended to create action prayers.

Like the more action could be in a prayer, the better.

He'd pray for people flying over volcanoes in a helicopter that they would be safe.

But we always love that.

But teaching kids to pray can be challenging.

What's one core problem that the book will help solve for parents and caretakers wanting to

teach their little ones how to pray?

I think the one thing that it could help solve right away is just where to begin.

Where to begin and how to start helping them to pray prayers that are, like we've said before,

like they are their own words.

And then I think that caregivers once they use these books as tools and the children love the

characters, then they'll see how they're teaching them the Lord's Prayer, but also in a very fun

and repetitive way, the way that repeats that where the children can just learn and learn,

and there's just never any ending to what they can learn through them.

Yeah, and when we were conceiving where we wanted the praypiles to go and what type of prayer to

focus on, we thought about how there's two sort of different ways that you'll pray. You'll pray

throughout the day and these short little bursts whenever you need help.

Like I pray, help me do okay on this podcast interview.

They're like arrow prayers that you shoot up.

And that's one thing, but then there's the time when you sit down and you're going to pray.

You say, now it's my time to pray.

What do I say? Where do I start?

So with kids, typically that's before meals and before bed, and that bedtime moment for me is

the time when I'm the most exhausted, I'm often frustrated by the shenanigans that happened

in the process of getting everyone ready for bed, and it's really hard for me to get my heart

into the right place to pray with the girls in a way that's heartfelt and biblically balanced.

And I'll tend to fall into the rut of repetition.

Just thank you for this day.

Bless grandma.

Bless the dog.

Bless her so and so and help the people flying over the volcano in the helicopter.

Yeah, exactly.

Just sort of repeating myself.

And that's okay sometimes.

But the praypiles help bring that balance to prayer.

And so with my kids, they like to be the praypiles.

So one of them will be poppy.

One will be Erie Rainey.

And whoever's poppy will tell God something that they love about him.

And then the next person will say something that we need to say sorry for today.

And so on.

And we're doing that without even having the book in hand.

And so I think it'll be even easier once we have that that physical book.

And they can engage with the characters more visually to bring that into their bedroom

and anywhere anytime where you want to sit down and think what do you say when you pray.

And then when you don't have that book, now you have the the framework in mind.

You have the easy pray acronym.

Okay, so good.

I love that because it's not just let's pray for the things we want.

Like one home school day, my daughter every every morning she pray for a puppy every

like a puppy.

She just wants a puppy.

And I love that it talks about all the different elements of prayer.

And then you're right.

Like those times in the evening when we're like let's just get these kids in bed.

And remember one time my my third oldest was probably about five or six.

I'm like let's just do a popcorn prayer.

Like everyone just say a sentence or two.

My oldest went my second oldest went my third oldest.

It's like quiet.

I'm like Nathan are you going to pray?

And he's like, I forgot the rules.

So yeah, it's like there's not rules but it's giving them something to understand

and something that they can follow.

But I would love to talk to you about the writing of the book.

So now that Nathan that was five of the time is 31.

We've written three books together.

Mother's son team.

I've done that before.

What's it worth some of the challenges that you face in writing?

Yeah.

The biggest challenge for me was how to express deep theological truths

with vocabulary that children can grasp and enjoy.

And that's not going to bore them.

As well as within that rhyme scheme that I committed to.

I committed myself to AABBA.

So now I'm working with all of it.

As well as adding layers of depth while also preserving the simplicity of my mom's original

characters and what makes them so instantly sweet when you hear the concept.

That's something we didn't want to lose that.

Especially because there are metaphor and there are a pneumonic device.

So they have to maintain a certain simplicity in order for the metaphor to really stick.

And if they got too over complicated then you might lose that simple clarity.

And our editor Katie Morgan has been a huge help in developing these stories in a way that

achieves a really interesting and I think unique balance of theological depth with simplicity and fun.

She just understood right away from her first message reaching out to us after we sent our

proposal. She really got the idea and was excited about it and was not interested in changing

the fundamental idea but has been really a great help in developing it further.

And as we spoke to earlier, infusing it with more gospel centeredness making Jesus the center.

And that's going to come out even more in the forthcoming books in the series.

We're really excited to go even deeper with each of the characters in each of the concepts around

prayer and take those to another level with more Bible references.

But for now we have this initial book that introduces all of four characters.

And yeah, we're excited about it.

That's awesome. Did you have a, was there a point in writing the books that stands out?

It's like a favorite moment or just a kind of a poignant time where it's like,

oh, this is really great to be working on this book with my son or with my mom.

Yeah, yeah, we've had a few. I feel like it's all been a high point.

I think I would say when, when we first had the idea of including the little boy

as the center, the thread, through the little, the narrative.

Because as my mom spoke to earlier, they were just the four prayer pals.

There were no other characters before and working with Katie and working with my mom,

we somehow ended up with this concept of having this little boy in his room who's wondering

about where things go and when they float away.

This is something that I see in my kids.

They just have this interest in the sky and where does your balloon go?

And it floats away. Does it go up to God?

We think of God as being up there and I think that that's not a wrong way to think of God

because he's high and exalted above us and our prayers go up.

But how do you know your prayers reach him?

Did they just float away like the balloon and pop at some point?

Or does God actually hear and does he respond?

And so that little boy, this is an Easter egg that's not in the book,

but I'm calling him Neil, after my brother's son, he's the only,

he's the only little boy in the generation of of my kids, my kids' generation.

And so I like the name Neil because he's kneeling in prayer.

Nice, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I have to brag on Neil too.

I have to brag on little Neil too because he is, he has to be,

I think of all my grand show, the most focused on these characters.

And I mean, they're all, they all love him, love them.

But he really, you know, wants to hear this.

We have little songs that we wrote and he wants to hear them before bed.

And he even, he was, of course, he's a genius, as you can imagine,

as all our grandchildren are.

But it was, he was still too when he was, when I would say,

what's the next character, you know, poppies, you know, what's the next character?

And he knew them in order and kind of had the basic concept.

So that was, that was a rule.

That's been a high, there's so many high points for me with this process.

But especially just after all these years of, you know,

having them in our house and not really knowing exactly where to go with them.

And, but wanting something to happen, it just was a real high point to watch it finally come

to, to be and working with Katie Morgan was amazing.

And she worked well with Jonathan.

And then Mike Henson, our illustrator, I'm, you know, have a background in illustration.

So seeing what he did with the characters was just made me cry.

I was just so excited.

He's a good designer and a very good illustrator.

And he just, he makes it a little funny and just, just very compelling for children.

So that's definitely the high point for me.

He brought a lot of humor to the character design while keeping them sweet and,

and, and relatable to kids.

But there's just this punchiness about his style.

And I can just tell he's a funny guy.

I haven't met him yet.

But I look forward to when I will meet him.

Well, that's wonderful.

Well, this is so wonderful.

You guys, Jonathan Christie, thank you so much for being with us here today.

Can you let our listeners know where they can connect with you and find prey pals?

Yes, so you can find prey pals wherever books are sold as they say,

but you can go to the Good Book Company website and pre-order the prey pals now.

Also from now until April 1st, if you're listening to this before the book comes out,

you can join our special review team at preypals.johnethanupor.com.

This is sort of an insider team that we're building where you can get a pre-release digital copy

of the book plus some printable resources and crafts and behind the scenes content

myself and my mom leading up to the launch.

And we all be asked is that you leave an honest review on April 1st on the big launch day,

which we're super excited about as you can tell.

Wonderful.

I love it.

So thank you so much.

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