Non­fic­tion

Mir­a­cles of the Bible

Josh Han­ft; Sey­mour Chwast, illus.
  • Review
By – March 2, 2012
The very sim­ple texts of the mir­a­cles select­ed (Cre­ation, Birth of Adam, Noah’s Ark, Sarah and Abra­ham, Part­ing of the Red Sea, Man­na from Heav­en, Moses on Mount Sinai, Bal­aam and the Don­key, The Walls of Jeri­cho, Sam­son, David and Goliath, Jon­ah and the Fish, Daniel in the Lions’ Den) are geared to younger chil­dren. They are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the bet­ter known bible sto­ries. Each sto­ry uses brief excerpts from the bible to give authen­tic­i­ty to the sto­ries select­ed. The bright­ly col­ored illus­tra­tions, by Sey­mour Chwast, are sim­ple and cheer­ful enough to appeal to the intend­ed audi­ence, with­out being men­ac­ing. They have a car­toon qual­i­ty. The many ani­mals are all cheer­ful, and usu­al­ly smil­ing, as are many of the humans, depend­ing on the text. Illus­tra­tions are enlarged to 2, 3 or 4 pages to show the impor­tance of the var­i­ous char­ac­ters. The text by Han­ft and the illus­tra­tions by Chwast are well suit­ed to the intend­ed audi­ence. Sev­en year olds will be able to read it them­selves. Younger chil­dren will enjoy hav­ing it read to them as they enjoy the illus­tra­tions. The book is a wel­come intro­duc­tion to some very seri­ous infor­ma­tion. Ages 4 – 8.
Arlyne Samuels a grad­u­ate of Brook­lyn Col­lege, taught and super­vised Eng­lish in New York City for 40 years. She was the coor­di­na­tor of the book club of the Greater Worces­ter (MA) Chap­ter of Hadas­sah. Arlyne passed away in May 2009 and will be missed by the Jew­ish Book World team.

Discussion Questions