Description: The stories children hear when they are young help form their minds and hearts. Instill a deep love for the Bible in your children with this richly illustrated storybook. Using beautiful traditional art and easy-to-understand language, 100 Bible Stories for Children teaches some of the best-loved stories from the Bible to ages 5-8. The illustrations will captivate your children as you read with them at bedtime or in Sunday School, and independent readers will return again and again to learn the stories of the heroes of the faith. You and your family will treasure this classic collection of Bible stories.
My Thoughts: Working in children's ministry means that it is always a good idea to have a children's Bible or Bible storybook on hand. So when I review these, I always take into account how different age groups will react to both the images and the text. So far as text goes, this one is pretty good. The stories are short, one to two pages so that they don't take long to get through. The lessons drawn from each story also correlate well to the way the stories would be told in Sunday school, making this book useful for parents who want to review lessons with their kids at home.
However, I am not as thrilled about the images. While there are a number of illustrations which are engaging and bright, most of these pictures appear twice, with one of the duel occurrences simply being an enlargement of part of the initial image which appeared on the previous page. With five year olds, this is not a problem. At that age, they are unlikely to notice that the pictures are the same illustrations, and if they do, they will think it a game to try and spot the similarities. Yet this book is advertised for 5-8 year olds, the later of which I think would soon notice the repetitive nature of the book.
Another issue with the illustrations is how difficult it would be to use the pictures as recall tools for the children who can't read the stories themselves. While the scenes are all different, most of the people are drawn looking remarkably the same. With only one story in between them, Joseph and Moses are drawn exactly the same, with the exact same brightly colored, Egyptian outfit. Which is sad, because the larger images, when evaluated individually, are actually beautiful.
There are merits to this story book, and I would definitely keep it around as an extra for when kids simply want to read a different book with different pictures. However, I would think it better suited to ages 3-5 rather than 5-8.
I have provided an honest review after having received a copy of the book from the publisher.
No comments:
Post a Comment