15-Year-Old Boy and His Siblings Create Comic Book Style Liturgy for Kids

How do you make the Liturgy of the Word more understandable and inviting for children?

In comic book style, 15-year-old Joseph Dickinson and his siblings created the series of books, "Diary of a God-Man" to make it easier for other children to understand the readings, psalms, and Gospels. It's "created by kids, for kids."

It all started when he and his siblings were doing the children's liturgy at their parish in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and his parents had the idea of doing the same with the Mass readings.

Joseph explains the process:

“Me and all my siblings will illustrate the Mass readings and send them to our family friend Travis Mcafee, who neatens them up and makes them presentable and puts them in the formatting and then we'll put them in the books."

Besides the books, they also offer the illustrations for parish subscriptions, that way each community will receive the content “every Sunday and they can print out as many as they want to hand out to the kids and people at the parish.”

Joseph states that children's books make the liturgy more “immersive” and help him participate better in Mass, as he understands the readings better.

“I get to see instead of just looking at black and white. I'm 15 and I still like to look at the picture books, so it makes Mass a little bit more interesting for me.”

Presenting the initiative at the Exhibit Hall of the National Eucharistic Congress, which is taking place in Indianapolis, Joseph says that he has received visits from other children who found the idea “very cool,” as it was inspired by famous children's comic books such as “Dog Man” or “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”

In this time of revival, he declares that the Eucharist has an important significance for him:

“I think it means Jesus cares about us. He has given his body and his blood to us as gifts.”