The One-Year Bible for Children

Title: The One-Year Bible for Children
Author: V. Gilbert Beers
Major Themes: Bible Stories, Devotionals
Synopsis: A Bible Story or devotional passage for every day of the year, illustrated with beautiful oil paintings, helps children understand God’s word better.

For a little over a year now, I have been reading The One-Year Bible for Children to my 6-year-old daughter. She has really enjoyed this Bible story book, and I liked it for the most part. I like to read books that tell stories from the beginning of the Bible to the end. It helps the children learn the order of the stories of the Bible when we read them that way.

There is a story in this book for each day of the year. We didn’t use it that way; instead, we read two stories each day that I did school with my daughter. A little over half of the book contains stories from the Old Testament, and the rest is New Testament stories. The last nine stories give glimpses into some of the Epistles. After each story are three discussion starters: Remember, which has several questions about details of the story; Discover, which challenges the child with questions that require more thinking; and Apply, which helps the child to apply the story to his/her own life. Interspersed among the stories are short lessons about many different topics, such as “Someone Who Never Sleeps,” “What Do the Skies Tell Us about God?” or “Does God Really Listen when I Pray?” These topics have the Discover and Apply discussion starters after them, but not the Remember part.

This book is profusely illustrated with beautiful oil paintings. Not quite every story has a picture, but most do. My daughter loved that! The pictures are very detailed, and realistic. I really like them.

Overall, The One-Year Bible for Children is a very good Bible storybook. The one aspect I did not like was the way children are pushed to make a decision for Christ. While I want all my children to do that, I do not feel that it is right to push young children into praying a “Jesus save me” prayer. There is more to salvation than just saying the words, and I want them to understand what they are doing and come to Christ of their own volition. Otherwise, I found this book to be an accurate retelling of the Bible, and it has helpful applications to daily life in the discussion starters after the stories.

WARNING: As stated in the last paragraph.