In a small home office in Greenville, S.C., Lydia Riley, who attends Pleasant View Baptist Church in Taylors, sits writing a story. Knit, stuffed mice sit on shelves smiling at visitors. Hand-painted illustrations of woodland scenes and families of mice adorn the walls. Other trinkets and memorabilia lay scattered across her desk as if spilling off her pages. The rest of the house is a testament that these cottage-core mice are no small part of Riley’s decor.
The characters are familiar to Riley, who first imagined them while telling her children bedtime stories more than 20 years ago. Now, the mice are central characters in a published children’s book series, “Jolley Tales.” She produces the books by the thousands, distributing them nationally and internationally as a way to minister to children.
The single mother now turns the stories she told her children into published life lessons for children around the world in a ministry that has changed her life. Riley said, “I love how God can use the most unlikely people.”
Two years ago, Riley suddenly lost her long-term job after a company buyout. One sleepless night, she couldn’t stop thinking about the mice. Then she had an epiphany.
“I could see it clear as a picture,” Riley said. “I knew I was supposed to write a series of books with these little characters. That night, I stayed up until the entire first series was written.”
This first series is made up of six books teaching biblical lessons such as obedience, kindness, and humility. Her first readers were her children.
“It was a way to correct the bad and to encourage the good that I saw in them throughout the day without necessarily mentioning the child by name,” she said.
The Jolley Tales books are short and simple. In the first book, “Jolley’s Tail”, Jolley travels to a nearby farm even after his sisters warn him that a trap is set there. Jolley ends up losing the end of his tail to the trap. The story concludes, “Jolley knows how important it is to obey. His short little tail helps him to remember.”
Every book features the same family of mice, each story following one of the six siblings as they learn a biblical lesson. “We relate that trap in Jolley’s Tail to sin and how sin is enticing,” Riley explained.
It’s a storytelling style as old as the Bible. Jesus often told his followers stories as he taught them, so Riley adds a few pages after each story with Bible verses and thought-provoking questions.
The books are beautifully illustrated, featuring hand-painted art on each page. Riley said the Jolley Tales
offer a cultural counterpoint to secular art. She expressed that she’s committed to using her work to fight darkness “It’s a beautiful childhood,” she said. “A charm and innocence that I don’t want this generation to lose.”
These stories have also traveled internationally. Riley has partnered with several missionaries to produce Jolley
Tales in nine languages and distribute the books throughout six continents.
Missionary Jack Clinard works with The Ukraine Project to help the people of Ukraine who are caught in war zones. He brought in translators to write the books in Hebrew and Ukrainian and distribute the books.
“We are using them to reach children who could use some hope in their lives,” Clinard said. “The children are very receptive and happy to get them.”
Riley never thought that her ministry would get to such an advanced level, now producing 30,000 copies of “Jolley Tales” every year. “I am to obey. We are to obey, and then leave the results to the Lord,” Riley concludes. “Whether they’re big or small, that’s up to Him.”
— Caleb Phillips is a recent graduate of the University of Northwestern-St. Paul currently living in Lakeville, Minn. With a degree in political science and minor in journalism, he hopes to pursue political commentary in the near future.