A few weeks ago, my wife stumbled upon this book when we were browsing at SKS Books. It's entitled, The Big Picture Story Bible. We were immediately taken with it because it takes a child through the Bible in a chronological manner. I'm a big fan of teaching the Bible chronologically because it explains the Gospel message fully, starting with the Old Testament. The Bible's big theme is how God created the world for his glory and when it fell in sinned, how he restored the world through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. A lot of times, kids are taught the saving work of Jesus but they don't understand why it has to be this way. They don't understand the idea of substitution, they don't understand what sin really is, how righteous God is and so on. Only by having a good understanding of the whole story, starting from Genesis, does God's story and plan become clear. Then children can readily understand, believe and trust in what God has done. We've seen this happen many times in the classes that we teach chronologically.
The Big Picture Story Bible does an excellent job of making the Gospel clear. We grabbed the last two copies that were on the shelf. One copy was a for a birthday gift and the other copy my kids have been devouring. The illustrations are very good and the story is written clearly and simply. A very very good resource for teaching kids the Bible's main message and taking children right through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
