Monday, September 07, 2009

Bible Stories

Yesterday Linnea was asked what's her favourite story, and she said "The one about the animals and the man makes a boat and the flood." And the other week I was talking to a friend about the cultural references children like ours just won't have to the same extent - we're making no effort to raise Christian or Catholic children, either at home or by sending them to schools where everyone does First Holy Communion and Confirmation and all the rest.

But I think some familiarity with the stories would be a good idea. As a child I had access to a set of American books which were wonderful; they were published by Scholastic and each one had a simple illustrated bible story in it. There were a hundred or so, I think - books a few mm thick taking up a whole shelf. I wonder whether or how I could find such a thing now?

Time to plough through websites...

5 comments:

Linzk425 said...

This is one reason I take Jack to church, and read him bible stories (we have a v simple children's bible). I want him to have the cultural knowledge. If he rejects Christianity, he will at least know what he's rejecting, and he'll still be able to answer pub quiz questions.

Funnily enough, the man with the animals and the boat is one of his favourites. Also "the bloody river" - the plagues of Egypt. Strange child.

Rivka said...

We just borrowed a children's illustrated Bible from church because we had run into one too many cultural references. I still feel kimd of uneasy about it, though.

Ailbhe said...

I found a beautifully illustrated pop-up Noah's Ark book in a Christian Bookshop yesterday. It was simple enough for a five- or six-year-old to read themselves. It began, "A long time ago God was very sad, because all the people in the world were very bad, except for a man called Noah and his family. God said that he would send a great flood to get rid of the bad people. He told Noah to build a boat." [next page] "The cruel people laughed at Noah, but he didn't mind."

I don't know what happened next, because I put it down in horror and backed away.

Rivka said...

Jan Brett wrote a really lovely version of Noah's Ark which bypasses the entire "God's wrath" element of the story. You can "search inside" the US version to see how it starts. And the pictures are gorgeous.

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