Reviewed by Kristin Stiles
“How very clever!” That is the phrase that kept coming to mind as I looked through Catherine Mackenzie’s Peek-A-Boo Bible. This is actually a collection of four board books that are assembled in a shallow box that slides into a durable cardboard case which has cut-outs so you can see each of the books as they peek out at you. The box is even color coded so that parents could have their children match the book to the proper spot when putting the books away. How very clever!
The four mini books are titled Jesus Saves, Jesus Lives, Jesus Loves, and Jesus Gives. Each book has a repetitive phrase that appears on every page. For example, in Jesus Saves, every page begins with “Jesus saves sinners from sin.” In Jesus Lives every page begins with “Jesus is alive. Jesus is God. He is God’s Son.” While I don’t expect little ones to grasp the complexity of those statements, the repetition is imprinting these truths on their young minds and Lord willing, one day they will come to understand and believe these amazing statements. How very clever!
These books are a joy to look through. The illustrations are colorful and very well drawn. Each page has a statement or a question that leads the child to look for something in the pictures. This type of interaction between a parent, a child, and the book fosters communication skills, visual skills, and higher lever thinking skills. How very clever!
I do have one small criticism of the book Jesus Lives, however. It would seem that some of the pages are out of order. The book begins with creation, moves on to the fall of man, and then goes to the cross, back to the birth of Jesus, then jumps ahead forward to the promise of eternal life, and back once more to the resurrection. I wish the book followed the chronological order of these events. I don’t know why they would be in this order. I suspect it may have been a publishing error. Not very clever. The other books do not need to be presented in a specific order, so this critique does not apply to them.
Overall, I was very impressed with Mackenzie’s Peek-A-Boo Bible. A lot of thought was put into the content – both the illustrations and the text. I love the idea of instilling these great doctrinal truths into the very youngest of children. You might say that it is very clever.
Kristin Stiles is a home-school mom, a Sunday School teacher, and helps lead the “Young, Reading, & Reformed” children’s ministry at Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia, PA.
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Peek-a-boo Bible: 4 Board-Books