The Story Travelers Bible by Tracey Madder

The Story Travelers Bible by Tracey Madder Illustrated by Tim Crecelius ISBN-13: 9781496409157 Hardcover: 356 pages Publisher: Tyndale Kids Released: March 1, 2017

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Join Lana, Munch, and Griffin on the adventure of a lifetime as they travel through the Holy Land and learn about the stories, cultures, people, and places of the Bible. High-quality illustrations, engaging sidebars, and scripture passages draw kids into the narrative.

The Story Travelers Bible teaches kids that the Bible is more than just a bunch of tales told by parents and Sunday school teachers, but the Bible documents God's work in and for His people from the beginning of time. The Story Travelers Bible will take kids on a ride through 85 Bible stories.


My Review:
The Story Travelers Bible is a children's Bible story collection for grades 3 - 7. The stories were told in present tense since the modern main characters (Lana, Munch, and Griffin) watch from a time-traveling bus as events happen. They started at creation and ended with John's revelation about the new heavens and new earth. The stories were usually tied together with a summary of what happened between these stories, so it reads as one continuous story.

There were side bars providing simple memory verses, some commentary about the events, and information about the various countries mentioned. Overall, the stories were retold pretty faithfully to the biblical versions. They skipped over things that parents might not want to explain, so Ruth simply goes to Boaz and he wakes up--no lying at his feet--and Rahab's occupation was never mentioned. Jael "quickly and quietly kills Sisera" without the details of how it was done.

The illustrations were simple in style yet looked more like real people than cartoons. They were also reasonably accurate in terms of what the people and things may have looked like. However, the illustrator didn't do a good job with early Genesis. It's hard to take the Noah account seriously as literal history when the illustration made it look like only a few animals would fit in the boat. Then the toy-like boat landed, apparently about to fall off off the top of a small mountain peak, with no way for the animals and people to get off the Ark.

Eve was shown sitting against the forbidden tree while she tells the serpent that they can't eat from the tree or even touch it. Oops! And both text and illustration had Adam asleep in Eve's lap, so he ended up eating the fruit without knowing where it came from. That's the one addition made to the biblical text that had theological ramifications, and I don't think the biblical text indicates that to be true. Anyway, except for early Genesis, this was one of the better children's Bible story collections that I've read.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.