Going Bananas

This morning Sarah and I were reading the story of the feeding of the 5,000, or as her children's Bible calls it, "The Little Boy's Lunch." One of the lines in the story is "Then he (Jesus) thanked God for the food and began to break the bread and fish into pieces."

A little while later she was at the breakfast table while I was in the living room doing a few things. Suddenly I heard Dana start laughing. Sarah had peeled an entire banana, broken it into chunks, and placed them on her plate. When her Daddy asked her why she'd done that, she said proudly "You broke it into pieces just like in the Bible!"

If we suddenly have more bananas than we know what to do with, I'll let you know... !!

This seems as good a time as any to plug the wonderful set of children's Bibles we've been using with Booper these past several months. It's a two volume set (OT and NT) called My Very First Bible. Published by Harvest House Publishers, the stories are retold by L.J. Sattgast and the terrific illustrations are by Russ Flint. We've used a number of "kid-friendly" Bibles in the past three years, and I think this is our hands-down favorite. It's officially listed for an age range of 2-7, and that's just about right. Sarah loves them, and we go through them again and again, often reading 3 or 4 stories each morning (they average about a dozen lines or so each). The stories are well chosen and well written. Some children's bibles have really awful illustrations -- either cartoonish or somewhat dreary old-fashioned Sunday School take-home paper pictures. These are bright and lively, well drawn, with fantastic details and expression and even some touches of droll humour. It pays to look carefully at each picture because you're often rewarded with a memorable detail. For instance, in the story of the miraculous catch of fish (post-resurrection, John 21) before Jesus gets on the scene, the disciples can't catch anything...and there's a marvelous illustration of Peter bringing up an old sandal from an otherwise empty net. Things like that capture kids' imaginations. Sarah always remembers that part! And it's much easier in the context of laughing together over Peter catching an old sandal, to press home the point that it's Jesus who makes the HUGE catch of fish possible! I also love the facial expressions on many of the characters' faces -- especially the people who are healed in the healing stories. Such joy and exuberance! The lame man turns cartwheels. The paralytic dances. These are memorably and beautifully done, really bringing the stories to full life.

Unfortunately they're out of print. We were blessed to find our copies through Amazon sellers - I think we spent $5 apiece, and that included shipping. And they looked like they'd never been read. Definitely worth finding and buying if you have little ones in your life that could benefit from a good introduction to the Scriptures.