Great for Under 5s
An age ago, I thought I’d start reviewing kids’ bibles. We must have about twenty in the house and most of them have been test driven on three children, so we’ve had a good overview. And since it’s be the sort of time of year when you might be thinking of gift shopping, I thought I’d share a few of our favourites. Different ages and personalities prefer different books and there’s also the aspect of trying to ensure that our kids don’t just hear Christian platitudes even at a young age.
We are not very routine people here in our Vicarage. So our bible time routine with the kids varies with the weather and has changed as the kids have grown and grumped and had fads. We do try to have a bible time with each of them every night. This is not always possible. For instance, if the Vicar’s Wife is on the phone to her sister and the Vicar is buying tickets for the Eurotunnel trip to France next summer and somehow the Queen is still in front of the fire reading stories with Happy at an hour way past her bedtime, she might go to bed with just a quick prayer. That was last night anyway.
But in the grand scheme of things, our routine is story-bible-pray-bed. With teeth and toilet somewhere in the equation. If you change the bible (or the study notes for the older kids) it does seem if there is some variety though. And our children seem to like that, especially the older two. The Engineer is more of a stick-to-what-you-know sort.
His favourite bible for a good few months was The Big Picture Story Bible. Big and with bold colourful pictures, it does what it says on the cover. But more than that, it points to Jesus, and the big picture of God’s work in the whole of the bible, all the way through. The strapline on the back of the book is
The Bible is a big book, about a big God, who keeps a big promise!
Inside, succinct text sits with the double page pictures, telling the story of how God’s people blew hot and cold in their relationship with him throughout the Old Testament. It speaks about the promise of God’s forever king, as the story points forward to Christ.
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- Jesus was nailed to a cross…
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- The people of Israel walk through the Red Sea
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- In the beginning…
As well as familiar New Testament stories of Jesus healing and teaching, the cross and resurrection are movingly told and Acts, the epistles and Revelation are all summarised, pointing to the time when:
God’s forever people will one day live in God’s forever place under God’s forever rule.
It’s a great book – highly recommended for preschool children and also those still in the infants who’ve not yet had a bible overview. A 5-7 year old who is beginning to read could help a grown up tell the stories.
The Vicar's Wife 
We were given it by our daughter’s god-parents at her dedication. Our four-year-old eldest son really enjoys it (bible and prayers are with both together at the moment).
The point of view of some of the pictures caused some early confusion, but we got used to it.
We particularly like trying to spot Nicodemus in various places.
Our favorite thing though, is the page where it shows all the pictures of Jesus (treading on a snake, as a king promised to David, on the cross, and risen). Reading that with our son really helped him to understand that Jesus doesn’t just turn up at the end.
It is good to see that their are others out there who also have Bible study with their kids. I thought that it was only my family who regurlarly had Bible time.
Fortunately for me my kids don’t want to go to bed if they haven’t had their Bible reading.
We have work through a number of Bible stories for kids and find it sometimes difficult to get our hands on a new good Bible stories book to replace the one we had worked through. Your post has been help to fill the gap.
Thanks for the informative post.
Welcome to the Vicarage Bible Stories. I’ve left your post up, as some of my readers may find it helpful, tho the Vicarage doesn’t really take advertising. Most of my readers are from the UK, though, so I suspect it won’t generate all that much business, unless you have some very good postage rates.
I agree with your choice of book! We give and recommend it to folk all the time—not just for the benefit of the kids but for the parent’s benefit also. It has been described as Goldsworthy for Kids (I think Goldy gets a credit in the opening pages, doesn’t he?), ie, it gives a wonderful Biblical Theology overview (or as you said ‘the big picture of God’s work in the whole of the bible’) that sinks into adult’s minds as they read it.
We’ve also suggested in to someone, hopefully not patronisingly, whose first language was not English because it gets the message across so well.
Will you be suggesting ‘The Jesus Storybook Bible’ also…that’s a good ‘un.
Hi Alex. Graeme Goldsworthy does indeed get a namecheck in the front of The Big Picture Story Bible. The Jesus Storybook Bible is great and I’ll certainly be reviewing that one too.