Published by B&H Publishing, B&H Kids on September 5, 2023
Genres: Children's, Bible Stories
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A floating zoo, a man swallowed by a fish, a sea split in two—these are just a few of the incredible stories from the greatest book ever: the Bible!
While the whole world fights for the attention of the next generation, there is one book that proves to be the best collection of stories of all time. In The Greatest Book Ever, author Teresa Krager aims to turn the attention of kids ages 4-8 to the Bible. It tells fascinating tales of miracles only God could perform and exciting stories of His courageous—and some not-so-courageous—friends.
God's Word holds some of the most captivating stories of all time, and The Greatest Book Ever refers to more than forty of them—all in only thirty-two pages! The lyrical rhyme makes this book an easy, fun read for the whole family, and illustrations by Jesús Lopez beautifully tie each tale together as part of one big story: the story of Jesus.
"You’ll want to read more because you’ve only heard
A quick teasing of tidbits and truths from God’s Word.
The rest of each story, you’ll find in His book—
The greatest book ever. Go, take a look!"
Although many picture books retell stories from the Bible, this unique book swiftly covers a variety of different characters and incidents from Scripture, sharing a message about the Bible as a whole. The author includes both obvious choices like Noah’s ark and lesser-known stories, such as Josiah becoming king at age seven. Teresa Joyelle Krager emphasizes that the Bible is full of exciting stories and truths, shares the gospel through the story of Jesus from the New Testament, and encourages kids to value the Bible as God’s message to us.
The brightly colored, dynamic illustrations from Jesús López will catch children’s attention, and the text is simple and short, without being too wordy for the target audience. There is also a chart at the end that provides Scripture references for each of the stories and topics referenced throughout the book. However, the rhyme scheme is inconsistent and sometimes feels forced. There are some pages where everything flows smoothly, but at other times, the meter is off, and some lines are awkward and clunky because the author changed up the sentence structure to fit the rhyme. Because this doesn’t always flow well, I think it would have worked better as a non-rhyming book. If someone plans to read this aloud to a group, I would encourage them to rehearse this carefully so that they don’t stumble over the words.
The Greatest Book Ever! will appeal to many Christian families and churches. It provides an enthusiastic, colorful overview of exciting Bible stories and important truths, and even though some kids won’t recognize or understand all of the references, this is a great launching pad for further study. This will probably appeal most to kids who are highly biblically literate, and who already recognize and understand the stories the author mentioned, but this can be a helpful teaching tool for parents or Sunday school teachers to introduce kids to the Bible, exploring the source material as part of the whole experience.