Toddler Bible

James, Bethan & Yorgos Sgouros. 2008. My Toddler Bible. Published by Tyndale.

This is a Bible story collection board-book featuring sixteen stories from both the Old and New Testaments. What stories do we have? Creation (But no Adam and Eve), Noah's Ark (Noah gets two of the sixteen actually), Joseph (coat, no slavery), Moses (as a babe with great promise), David (just David and Goliath, no being King), Jonah (but without the temper tantrum at the end), Daniel (lion's den), the rest of the stories are devoted to Jesus--from birth through resurrection. The stories are presented simply and matter-of-factly. Here's an example of Moses:

This is baby Moses.
His mother hid him from the mean king in Egypt. God made sure he was kept safe. When the princess found Moses, she looked after him.
God had a job for Moses.
When he was grown up, he led God's people out of slavery in Egypt to a land where could love and worship God.

See? Short and sweet. There are plenty of missing stories--I'm curious as to why there isn't an Adam and Eve story, or an Abraham story for that matter. (Though now that I think about it, Abraham is most famous for being willing to sacrifice Isaac, so that wouldn't be age-appropriate.) But the stories we do have are good ones belonging in any Bible story collection. They're safe and a bit cleaned up. But I think that has more to do with being age-appropriate--do concepts of slavery, cruelty, war, etc. really belong??? There will be a time and place for the fuller stories to be shared.

© Becky Laney of Young Readers