Reading with Pearl: Children’s Bibles

I realize the topic of Bibles for children is pretty specific and perhaps not widely interesting but it’s an important one in our household so I thought I’d share what I’ve found/learned in the past two years.

First, there are lots of bad children’s Bibles out there but I’m not going to focus on that today. While there are many stories in the Bible that are not exactly appropriate for young children, there are also too many versions of the Bible for children that really whitewash what the true story is all about or even present versions with theological inaccuracies. The following Bibles are some of our current favourites. Meaning I approve of them and Pearl enjoys them too!

The Jesus Storybook Bible:

This is maybe the most popular one I’ve seen around the internet and that many people i know have. The illustrations are unique (and I like that Jesus isn’t Blondie McWhiterson) and the story is well told. The whole book definitely focuses on Jesus, bringing each story back to the central tenet of the Christian faith: that God sent His son to die for our sins. Some of the stories take a little bit of liberty in added details but not in a concerning way. While this is definitely an abridged version, it does cover the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, which I appreciate.

I bought this one for Pearl to start reading together at Advent last Christmas. She loved looking at the pictures but would never let us actually read to her from it. So I simply left it out in her room and with her books and she was able to look through it when she liked until she finally allowed us to touch it and read it to her. Just recently at Easter, we used this Bible to read the Easter story to Pearl during Holy Week.

Read-Aloud Bible Stories:

This one was given to Pearl by my brother and his wife (who are both very knowledgeable in the field of children and the church). They started her with volume 3, which has the creation story and later gave her volume 1. I believe there are five volumes in total. These books are great for the stage Pearl is in right now. The stories are very simply told, have the right amount of repetition, and hold her attention well.

Little Fish Books About Jesus:

There are eight little books in this series, all about Jesus or depicting His parables. These are books I had when I was a kid and when my parents were clearing out old boxes, they brought along three of these. I know we had more of them but who knows where they’ve gone to in the last twenty years. While it seems that the books are only available through the UK (we had the Commonwealth edition but they don’t seem to ever have been distributed in Canada), I was able to get used copies in terrific condition quite cheaply through abebooks.com. Pearl likes the small size of these books and I like how well the stories are told. Also, they’re easy to throw in to my purse for going out and about.

If you have any recommendations for children’s Bibles, I’d love to hear them!