by John Brown and Brian Wright
Illustrated by Lisa Flanagan
2021 / 40 pages each
Christian Focus Publications
Rating: GOOD/Great/Give
I’ve never been a fan of children’s Bibles. When our kids were young, we never used them during our daily family worship. We always just read straight from the Bible. I figured they would get enough Bible stories at school – and they did.
My negative attitude about story Bibles is due to a couple of factors. One is their tendency to moralize everything and the other is to miss the One to whom the whole Bible is pointing: Jesus. So I was a tad skeptical about this series of storybooks based on the Minor Prophets.
I looked at the first four volumes in this series: Obadiah & the Edomites, Habakkuk’s Song, Haggai’s Feast, and Zephaniah’s Hero. They’re meant for reading to kids ages 4-6, but kids ages 7-10 should be able to read them for themselves. I read through them for myself and mostly appreciated the approach. They’re well-written, capturing the message of these books, and helping kids see how they point to Christ. The illustrations are colorful, bold, and appropriate.
I don’t have any young children at home anymore and no grandchildren yet either. However, I have a daughter who works as a nanny. I asked her to test drive these books with the children she cares for. These were kids on the younger side of the target audience and she found they had a hard time focussing. However, she did say that they would probably work well in the Christian primary school environment or perhaps Little Lambs (Sunday School) at church.