The Big Picture Story Bible [Hardcover]

This book contains accurate, simplified accounts of Bible stories. The pictures are big and colourful, which my kids love. The words are easy to read and contain the main points of each story, but many stories are over-simplified, and exclude some important facts and information. Overall a great book to use to teach your children the Bible, but definitely not a substitute for the complete Bible.

My husband and I can't speak highly enough about it. It treats the Bible as having a cohesive message, showing the way the OT and the NT are connected through the coming Messiah. Not a set of isolated stories, but one great big message of love and hope from God to them.

This is an excellent Bible story book. Unlike most children's Bible stories (and scholarly commentaries), this work does not treat the Bible as a collection of separated stories that teach us moral life lessons. Rather it shows how all of Scripture is one big story - that of God's relationship to and saving work toward his people. It traces the covenant promises of God in redemption from creation and fall through the patriarchs and prophets to Christ and the early church. My favorite part of this book is where Jesus explains to his disciples, post-resurrection, how all the Old Testament Scriptures point to and pre-picture him and his saving work. The art here is great and provides a helpful jumping-off point for parent-child discussions.

The book does have weaknesses. For example, it blows through the patriarchs far too quickly and misses some very clear foreshadows of the redemption that would one day come through Christ. Perhaps the most glaring example of this is where the book completely leaves out God's testing of Abraham, where God ultimately provides the ram for the sacrifice, substituting for Abraham's only son, Isaac. It is a shame to see such clear types of God's redemption through Christ left out.

Beyond the obvious and overall strength of the book - that of emphasizing the Bible as one story - there are some subtle strengths to the book. An example of this is the way the illustrator has made Adam and Christ to look the same. This is a (presumably intentional) depiction of the first and last Adam theme in redemption which again provides parents with a natural talking point with children.

All in all, this is an excellent story that deserves to be widely read. Too often the Bible is not read as it was meant to be - from cover to cover in order and as one story, God's story. This book is a great big step toward correcting that. Parents will find themselves blessed as they have the privilege of teaching (and learning) that the Bible really is one "big picture" story.