Also by this author: His Testimonies, My Heritage: Women of Color on the Word of God, God's Very Good Idea: A True Story of God's Delightfully Different Family, Creative God, Colorful Us, The Big Wide Welcome: A True Story About Jesus, James, and a Church That Learned to Love All Sorts of People (Tales That Tell the Truth), God's Very Good Idea Board Book: God Made Us Delightfully Different, Jesus and the Very Big Surprise: A True Story about Jesus, His Return, and How to Be Ready, Jesus and the Lions' Den: A True Story about How Daniel Points Us to Jesus, Goodbye to Goodbyes: A True Story About Jesus, Lazarus, and an Empty Tomb, The Friend Who Forgives: A True Story About How Peter Failed and Jesus Forgave, The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross, The Storm That Stopped, The One O'Clock Miracle, The Christmas Promise, The Prisoners, the Earthquake, and the Midnight Song
Published by Good Book Company on January 1, 2023
Genres: Children's
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32 pages of coloring, puzzles, mazes, and activities for children, based around The Big Wide Welcome storybook.
This coloring and activity book contains 32 pages of coloring, puzzles, mazes, and activities for children 4-8 years old.
It is based around The Big Wide Welcome Bible Storybook by Trillia Newbell, illustrated by Catalina Echeverri, which uses the Bible’s teaching on favoritism from James chapter 2 to encourage children to love and welcome people regardless of their wealth, personality, or background, just like Jesus does.
This activity book supplements The Big Wide Welcome storybook, including text from Trillia Newbell and converting Catalina Echeverri’s original illustrations into coloring pages. The book focuses on the lesson in James 2 about favoritism, using kid-friendly language and examples to teach kids that they should reach out and be welcoming to all people, regardless of their differences. Although kids will enjoy this best alongside the storybook, this one reproduces text from the original and also works as a standalone. The book emphasizes Jesus’s love for all people, his love for the child in particular, and the importance of sharing his love through welcoming others.
The Big Wide Welcome Art and Activity Book includes multiple different activities, such as mazes, wordsearches, matching puzzles, and more. The puzzles are simple and are appropriate for young children, while the complexity of the coloring pages will appeal to some older children who would want to fill in all of the details. In some families, siblings of different ages would be able to share the book and get different things out of it. This book would be a nice addition to a family library, and because it works as a standalone, it would also make a great gift in a context like Sunday school, where the teacher can’t afford to give everyone the original book but can give out copies of the activity books.
The main drawback with this book is that most kids will fill and complete it quickly. Because it’s inexpensive, this won’t be an issue for most people, but I think it would be nice if the book also included seek-and-find elements to give it more longevity. For example, there could be a list at the beginning or the end of the book mentioning different things to look for throughout all of the illustrations, and that could give the book more potential for repeat uses.