Amy Carmichael (For Children)

It is a children’s version of the full-length biography of Amy Carmichael. It tells how a girl from the north of Ireland helped the mill girls of Belfast, went as a missionary to Japan and then to India, and made a home at Dohnavur where children could be safe and loved, and where they called her Amma, “mother.”

An Irish missionary who lived from 1867 to 1951. She went to South India in 1895 and stayed for fifty-five years without ever going home. With Indian Christian friends she travelled the villages telling people about Jesus, and from 1901 she cared for children at Dohnavur, first girls and later boys too. She also wrote many books.

Every chapter is short and made to be read aloud. It begins with a Bible verse, tells one part of Amy’s story, shows one simple thing it means for you, and ends with a short prayer. Three questions follow, to talk about together.

Some of it is sad. Amy lost her father, her mother and dear friends, and she spent her last twenty years in pain after a fall. Some little girls in her day were given away to live at temples, where they were not safe or cared for. The book says this very gently, with no frightening detail, and it speaks with respect of the Indian people and Hindu families among whom Amy lived. Above all it is a story about a safe and loving home, and about how God cares for every child.

Yes. They come from Amy Carmichael’s own early books and from the people who knew her, as gathered in the full-length biography. A few stories, like the prayer for blue eyes, the comet at school and the fur gloves in Japan, were remembered by Amy or told about her long afterwards, and the book says so. It also says plainly that the law which ended the giving of girls to temples was the work of Indian leaders.

It is for children, to be read aloud by a grown-up or read by an older child alone. There is also a teen edition, and the full-length biography for older readers.