The Big Picture Story Bible, written by David Helm and illustrated by Gail Schoonmaker, is unlike any children’s bible story book that I have ever read. It took me almost the end of the book that it’s more than just a big picture story bible, but it’s a BIG PICTURE story bible. In other words, it doesn’t spend forever going into detail on all the various stories in the bible as frequently told to children. Instead, it presents a story of the “big picture” of the bible — a “unified story running through the Old and New Testaments.”
The illustrations are top notch and my daughter really enjoyed them. I read at least 25 pages the first time we sat down to read it–the pictures were so engaging and there was just the right amount of words to pages to allow even my 2 year old to have a good attention span with it. We actually really liked that the story of Noah was so succinct (we feel that one is always over done).
The other thing that I liked a lot was that they went through the lineage of Christ pretty well, too. I actually feel like I got a little bit of extra knowledge out of it. This book is an excellent quality hardcover book with durable binding and pages thick enough that zealous (but probably not careless) little fingers won’t destroy them.
Overall, I would recommend this book to almost any Christian who would like to present an alternative view of the bible beside just the “stories” inside of it. I would be cautious about recommending this to super-orthodox Catholics (I am one–BTW) just because the end seems to put a lot of emphasis on baptism by water and “being saved.” My husband, on the other hand, thought that his was the best story bible he’s seen yet and that even he is learning things from it, so there you go. I think this book would make a great gift for a child, grandchild or godchild!
Thanks to Crossway for providing a copy of this book for review!
