Discover the very best Bible stories - retold in simple words and bright pictures that are bursting with joy.

Review:  This is an easy to read Bible that retells twenty stories from the Old and New Testament. It manages to squeeze in all the favourites, including 'Noah’s Ark', 'Daniel in the Lion’s Den', T'he Parting of the Red Sea', 'Joseph and his Brothers' and 'David and Goliath'. The New Testament content includes all the stories of Jesus you would expect, parables and miracles, with even St Paul’s journeys added.

Author Christina Goodings is to be congratulated on her miracle of getting a quart into a pint pot without sacrificing quality or content. With Jamie Smith’s charming colourful illustrations that take up three quarters of the page, padded cover and stiff board pages, it would be reasonable to expect a very childish approach. However, this is from Lion Children’s books, and they have a reputation for telling Bible stories accurately. Each story links into each other, so that there is a sense of continuity and the child can understand where the stories fit into the ‘real Bible’.

This is a book that takes a Christian perspective of continuity, however, so teachers who want the Old and New Testament stories clearly divided will have to choose another version. Here, Jesus is described as the fulfilment of God’s promise to the Jews and that he will ‘make their people great again’. The illustration shows men and women kneeling in a synagogue, with what looks like their hands in Christian prayer.

For a Christian context, this is a very safe, readable, authentic version of stories from the Bible. Its illustrations are cheerful but also manage to simply convey difficult ideas, such as the Pentecost image of the disciples seeing 'flames of fire dancing over them.' It also includes the cutest baby Jesus ever seen, in a wonderful picture of him looking up wide-eyed at the Three Wise Men, as they look wide-eyed at him.

2010-01-29