Who doesn’t love a pop-up book? Curmudgeon-y old cranky faces, that’s who. The rest of us know that they are a lot of fun to read, especially if you have young readers to share it with. I got and read my Pop-Up Bible Stories with my five and three-year-old’s and they really enjoyed it. Basically this book has five vignettes of stories in the Bible: Baby Moses floating in the basket,Daniel and the Lions Den, Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter, The parable of the lost sheep and Jesus calming the storm. Each story is told in a short paragraph with an accompanying Bible reference so you can explore the story in more detail.
This is a pop-up book and each scene . . . pops. Like I said, my kids liked it. But as the older curmudgeon-y, cranky face I have a couple of basic criticisms:
- I think the best pop-up books are interactive with pull tabs, wheels, doors to open, etc. There is actually only one scene in the whole book with a trap door to open (revealing the king looking down). The rest of them are just fun to look at.
- Because this basically gives vignettes of Bible stories, it doesn’t really tell the stories. I think this makes it appropriate for younger kids (or young readers who are practicing their reading on stories they are already familiar with). But I personally prefer a more narrative approach in my pop-ups.
- Finally this is a book of Bible stories where the characters are fairly white (i.e. the Egyptians, the Persians, the Mediterranean Jews all look White Anglo Saxon Protestant). I like Bible books for children which do not re-enforce ethno-centricity in my ultra-pasty kids.
But this is putting a book for children under far too much critical scrutiny. My children love it.
Thank you to Kregel Publications for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for this review.
thoughts, prayers & songs: 