Title: The Lion Bible for children
By: Murray Watts and Helen Cann
Price: £9.69
Published by: Lion Children’s
Perfect for: children age 4-11
Best bit: over 200 re-told Bible stories, told in order including ones from prophetic books and psalms, with pictures on each page!
Worst bit: Although this is really hard, as a bedtime story book, I would prefer the stories to be more equal in length.
More thoughts:
This book would make a great book for families wanting to work through lots of the stories in the Bible together.
It includes both Old and New Testament stories told in chronological order (as far as that is possible) with the Bible references and lovely artwork on every page.
It includes lots of less-well-known stories like Jehu (my fave because he is left handed like me!), Isaiah’s vision, Hezekiah.
There is only a little commentary about the meaning of the stories, which I appreciate as it gives us as the readers and listeners a chance to reflect on what the story means and where it fits into the whole story of the Bible.
The stories are well written so as to be read individually, which a nice story arch, as well as fitting nicely into a whole-Bible story arch, which I think is important if we are to take the Bible seriously. If we want our children to read a children’s Bible as an introduction to the Bible text later one, we need not to be accidentally teaching them things they will need to unlearn later.
At the back is a map, an index of people and a word list, simple but useful tools.
As always, I look at which stores have been given more space than others, and which chosen to include and which exclude. This book has a lot of Bible stories in, and has done a good job of choosing some of the more unusual ones.
I’d definitely add this to my collection of children’s Bibles!