New Light Bible Stories
Edited by Jean Watson
Illustrated by Susan Wintringham
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
ISBN: 0-340-75665-9
Summary/Back cover:
A collection of favourite Bible stories especially selected for children.
Review:
First up, I mean absolutely no disrespect to any other religion or belief system by including this review. For those of us who are Christian, though, it is as tricky to find a book to introduce the Bible to our children as it is any other sort of book. I’ve read a couple of stories to my children straight from my Bible, but as we all know the Bible is big on words (all 1400 pages of them) but not so much with the illustrations.
This book is a collection of eight key Bible episodes: “In the beginning”; “The Garden of Eden”; “Noah and the ark”; “Angels and shepherds”; “Loaves and fishes”; “The good Samaritan”; “Good Friday”; and “The empty tomb”. It is not to be mistaken for a children’s Bible.
It commends itself on the back cover for being “The only children’s story book to use an actual Bible translation rather than a paraphrase or a re-telling”. It is obviously still heavily edited, though. The story of Noah and the ark, for example, refers to the raven, but not to the dove, so the story is missing the symbolism of the dove with the olive branch indicating to Noah that the earth was regrowing and it was safe to disembark.
As far as the illustrations go, the illustrator does well to depict nakedness and death by crucifixion in careful ways that most parents and children will find acceptable.
I think the editor did well in narrowing the whole Bible down to eight stories. I think I would prefer a book that gave more explanation, though, even if it meant resorting to paraphrasing. It took me years to realise that the significance of the Samaritan helping the man on the road was that they were from different cultures that did not interact at the time. I want those sort of explanations conveyed in versions of the stories for my children. To cover my own ignorance as much as to help my children understand the stories!
But, everyone will have a different idea of what they want their children to know. As far as this book goes, it gives an adequate introduction to the Bible that would be reasonably easy for young children to follow.
My rating: 3 out of 5
Review written by team_s
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