Choosing a Children’s Bible
I’ve been wanting to blog about this for the longest time. Christmas is a great time to gift children with bibles.
I’ve been looking for a bible for Sophie. We started with The Rhyme Bible Storybook (For Toddlers). It served us really well. It has 4 lines per page and it rhymes! Really a joy to read. Many times Sophie memorized the stories and read it back to me. But funny how she doesn’t like some stories and she will choose her fav. Guess what are her favs? Her top three:The parable of the sower (can’t figure why), birth of Jesus (coz got baby), Jonah (always a good story to teach her about obedience! I think she likes it coz of big fish). Oh… and she likes the story about the boy with 5 loaves and 2 fish (coz got little boy who gave to Jesus).
But she’s now 3 and for non-biblical books, she’s into long stories so I figured she can do that for the bible too. My ideal children’s bible is the NIV in full form with pictures for every chapter but of course it’ll be too big a book! Sigh…
I finally found one that I like a lot. It’s the Read & Know Bible (Publisher – Lion UK). It’s meant for older kids I think. But it’s cool because it has lots of details that toddler bibles do not have and the illustrations is more realistic. Yet it is pretty readable for a 3-4 year old who like books. It’s got mini bible encyclopedia pages with pictures of crops in bible times, the temple, etc. It really helps to open Sophie’s eyes to biblical times. It’s a huge jump from The Rhyme Bible but so far she loves it coz she is really into details and asks far too many questions. But most times it’s too much to read so I skim and just let her look at the pictures. Sometimes when I’m lazy, I switch back to The Rhyme Bible and it is interesting to note how she can link the stories between the two books. Oh yes and how cool that the author’s name is also Sophie.
The best part about this bible is that I learn a lot too and it tells a lot about the character of God through the narration. It doesn’t just tell a story but it gives you an idea about how God feels too and it’s pretty accurate. We’ve had this book for about a month now and I think Sophie’s understanding of who God is is actually growing!
Her godparents gave her the Sprout Bible which coincidentally I bought her when she was a wee baby just coz I was at SKS and I can’t resist buying books at SKS. But I didn’t bring it with us to NZ coz we just had too many things. So it was great when it came thru the mail for her birthday! I really like this one too because the stories are short, illustrations are GREAT and it has reflection questions for the kids at the end of every story. Sophie is at the age where she does think about these things and I find the questions very effective to get her to think deeper. We brought it with us to Christchurch. (Thank you godpa n godma! Great buy!)
