Review: The Action Bible

Around about Christmastime, we bought Ian-7yo yet another Bible. Knowing how many people groups still wait for a Bible, and knowing how many Bibles MY KIDS have, well I have such mixed feelings about that.... but I digress...

At any rate, the new Bible is called The Action Bible, and it is written entirely in graphical novel format. When I was initially researching this Bible I came across this little tidbit, which really delighted me:

"Sergio has worked for Marvel Comics and DC Comics. He attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art as well as the Word of Life Bible Institute in upstate New York."

Yay! A WOLBI alumni! Now, I have to confess that I had had some qualms about a Bible that was basically written as a comic book. I mean, we don't want to confuse the two, do we? If the kids have a Bible in a comic format, will it take away from The Truth? Some "experts" even say that having any pictures in a kids' Bible is inadvisable, and will confuse the children about the real events portrayed in their Bibles.

I can see their point. I really can. And of course that should be a concern. But I bought it anyway, and I'll tell you why. My son has recently discovered "reading", and cannot get enough of the graphical novels he finds in the library. Some of them are okay, some are a bit iffy, and I monitor what he takes out closely. It was my hope that if he had The Action Bible, that he would choose to spend more time looking at the Bible and maybe a little less on Star Wars. (As if!)

Having had The Action Bible in our possession for almost seven months now, I wanted to give a little review from the standpoint of a parent whose sons are totally enthralled with it. Although it was not my intention, my husband began using The Action Bible during our evening devotions with the boys. They love it! It's like the stories are coming alive to them, and I confess that I have also gotten some insights into the stories as well! And they are focused the whole time on the story and the pictures. They remember the stories long after we've read them too.

And the most recent development? Ian has been struggling to fall asleep at night, so I recently began allowing him to spend 15 minutes reading his Bible in bed. So on nightly basis he is spending at least 15 minutes reading his Bible, and I do mean READING, because afterwards he will come and read to ME!! And somewhere along the line I realized that he is actually teaching himself to read with his Bible, because he is sounding out words that I never taught him. It's pretty cool.