Review: The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible

Jared Kennedy.  The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible.  Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, November 13^th, 2017. 272 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Westminster | Amazon

My kids and I really enjoyed this book.  As the title and the cover of the book suggests this is a book with Bible stories for little children and is meant for kids between the age range of three to seven which is exactly the age range of my children.

This work contains fifty two stories with the order of the book being chronologically arranged.  These fifty two stories are evenly divided between the Old Testament and the New Testament, with twenty six stories each.  The book starts off with God’s creation and ends with Jesus opening up a scroll as recorded in the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation.

At first the size of this book intimidated me, reaching over two hundred pages.  However it turns out that this wasn’t a problem once I started reading it aloud to my girls.  They wanted me to read more than one story in one sitting which I think is something to credit both the author and the illustrator.  Typically we ended up going over three stories a night without myself feeling strained or the girls losing focus.  This last year I have read various different children’s Bible story books to my daughters and some of them had strange illustrations or were to abstract in its artwork.  This was not the case with this particular work and I enjoyed the artwork and illustrations that was just right for the intended age group.  With that said I do think at times the artwork was a little silly but it wasn’t over the top.  Each story also ended with a question that allowed myself as a parent to have further discussion with my kids.  This was helpful for me as I don’t want to just read to my kids without shepherding and pastoring my children.

In terms of the contents much of it was what you would expect with a children’s story Bible.  But there were times I was impressed such as the book being very clear and explicit that God’s promise to save sinners began in the Garden of Eden after the Fall.  One constructive criticism I have with the book is the chapter on Peter and Cornelius in which the book tells us that Cornelius ate Lasagna several times in this short chapter.  The Bible of course never states that Cornelius nor any other Italian Gentiles at this time ate Lasanga.  Furthermore to be historically correct Lasagna didn’t exist during first century AD for it wasn’t invented until the Middle Ages during the early fourteenth century.  I think it is important not to distract kids from the main story and also that we must be careful that we don’t use literary license to insert something that clearly was not the case since it could be distracting and against the spirit of a story book Bible which is about spreading the truth of God’s Word.

Overall a helpful resource and worth getting.  Also if you are thinking of getting a children’s book with Bible stories as a gift this book would be great for that too.

NOTE: This book was provided to me free by New Growth Press and Litfuse without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated