Great Bible Story Book Series for Kids

Trying to find a Bible story book that you can read to your young children is often a challenge. Some aren't much more than "Jesus loves you" messages - page after page - with a few baby cherub pictures thrown in. I guess such Bibles have their place. Then there's a variety of other versions that add value in different ways. And, of course, there's no beating reading a regular version of the Bible to your child. But my experience is that a good children's Bible story book supplements a straight reading of the Bible in very helpful ways.

A few years ago I came across a set of Bible stories that I have read to my children ever since. These stories come in a Ten Volume set, entitled, The Bible Story by Arthur Maxwell. You can learn more about the book and the author by clicking here.

The series covers the entire Bible. No story, (at least that I have yet observed) has been left out. Because the purpose of God's Word is not always to give us every detail of a person's life (example: Jesus' childhood), the author respectfully (and I think fairly faithfully) "speculates" about such things. He never makes up things that a Bible character said or did. And if he's just exercising a little imaginative wonder, he clearly communicates that.

The pictures are fantastic. Very colorful. My kids love the pictures as well as the stories. We bounce back and forth between an Old Testament volume and then a New Testament volume.

One of the things I like most about the series is that it was written in the 1950s. I know that there is no golden era of the Christian faith (though the Puritans come in at the top for me). However, I really like the fact that this is not yet another children's book trying more to be "relevant" to the child than faithful to the text. Who needs that? The author gives a faithful rendering of the story (with bits and pieces of the actual biblical text interspersed throughout the story) in a winsome way that gives my children a real love for the stories and a deep desire to hear them again and again. You just can't beat that.

Here's the link again to the website that sells this series. I wasn't able to find it at Christian Book.com. I didn't check Amazon. I did see the series on E-Bay.

The Bible Story
More than four hundred stories in ten volumes covering the entire Biblefrom Genesis to Revelation
by Arthur S. Maxwell

I would encourage you to buy this series at once and begin reading the stories to your children as soon as they arrive. You won't regret it. It's an impacting and fun way to shepherd your children. And as I said earlier, you just can't beat that.

Blessings,
Dale