Every Halloween, I'm reminded of a theory of mine. My theory is that every kind of monster that you see in a scary movie, or read about in a horror novel, or imagine is hiding under your bed, actually is a symbol of a fear common to human beings, and that's actually what makes them scary. For example: why would a ghost be scary? They go right through walls! A ghost, in theory, couldn't even pick up a knife to stab you or a club to hit you. I think the reason people are afraid of ghosts is that ghosts represent something else people are already afraid of: death. I think people are scared of skeletons because we fear not having enough food... starvation. I think we fear mummies because we fear embarrassing or dangerous things that may come back from our past to ruin our present. I think we fear werewolves because we fear wild animals; I think we fear zombies because we fear strangers (what's stranger than someone you used to know who is now only an animated corpse?) It's easy enough to come up with a basic fear of mankind that matches up with just about any creature from any B movie you can think of.
In his new book, verbosely titled Night of the Living Dead Christian: one man's ferociously funny quest to discover what it means to be truly transformed, Matt Mikalatos, who must have had a heck of a time in Kindergarten learning how to spell his own name, takes a different approach. He matches up different approaches to living as a human being to different monsters. Then, in a whimsical twist, he writes a story starring himself as both narrator and one of the main characters. Apparently, some of the other characters in the story resemble some of his own real-life friends as well, and the neighborhood suspiciously resembles his own. However, the next-door neighbor in the book, a man named Luther, is (reportedly) not based on a real neighbor of his. Luther, who when he becomes angry transforms not into the Incredible Hulk but into an incredibly dangerous werewolf, soon also becomes the focal point of the story, because although it is a book that contains zombies, mad scientists, vampires, and one very large android, the book is actually about the transforming power of surrendering your life to Jesus Christ.
I almost hate to synopsize the story itself, because I feel like I'm giving away too many spoilers and it's much more fun to read it for yourself, but I'll fill you in on a few things to give you an idea of what the book is like. Luther, early on in the story, becomes estranged from his wife. In fact, the first time we see him (in human form, anyway), his wife has just loaded their baby in the minivan, and told Luther they are leaving him. After determining, based partly on Luther's wife's assertion that "He's a monster. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? A monster," that Luther is indeed a werewolf, Matt and his friends, who were unable to locate any silver bullets with which to shoot the wolf, instead attempt to kill him by pelting him with coins with a high silver content shot from slingshots. This attempt meets with limited success; the werewolf is not killed, but instead is befriended, and the crew sets off on a quest to figure out how to cure him of his werewolfiness. On the way they escape from a horde of Study Bible-toting zombies, get advice from a recovering vampire, and face off several times with a very persistent monster hunter. If you took Pilgrim's Progress, threw it in a cooking pot with a little bit of C.S. Lewis and a pinch of Monty Python, and then stirred in a season or two of Scooby Doo reruns, this book is what you would get. It's wacky and unusual. The line between metaphor and "real" is pretty blurry: Luther is a man who loses his temper and that transforms him into an angry person, and we might say he "became a monster," but he also actually transforms physically into a furry monster. So the book is a true monster story, although since it is not actually very scary, you might have to classify it as, I don't know, a "monster comedy" or something like that. But under the surface humor is a strong, important message about the way we non-monster human beings lead our lives.
That message is this: each of us has problems that we cannot solve without the transforming power of Jesus. Sometimes we can't use sheer willpower to keep from becoming angry. Sometimes we can't keep from selfishly, vampirically using others by making up our mind to be nice. It takes the power of God to change us. The scene where Luther is finally freed from his lupine tendencies, reminiscent in many ways of a similarly vivid scene from the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, illustrates a kind of change which is painful, horrible, and necessary. It's the story of all of us, after all. The final chapter is bittersweet; bitter because as in real life, not everything is resolved as we wanted it to be, but also sweet because there is a ray of hope which mirrors the hope that shines in each of our hearts when Jesus becomes our life focus.
I enjoyed this book very much, but didn't laugh out loud at it. (Then
again, I don't laugh out loud at Scooby Doo and Monty Python, either.) I
enjoyed it in the way that I enjoy a good fast-paced satire: I don't
want to break out and laugh, because if I do, I might miss the next
funny bit! It does take time to sort of acclimate yourself to the world
that is unfolding in the story... particularly since the "Introduction"
is written by the fictional Luther, whom we will not meet until chapter
3, and the "Prologue" is actually located in chapter 2. After that, you
spend a lot of time trying to guess which characters are also monsters,
and what the heroes are going to try next to cure Luther. For me, one of
the funniest mental images in the book is when Luther, at the advice of
a psychologist who asserts that he must accept that he is a werewolf
and learn to control himself, dresses in a suit and spectacles while in
wolf form and strikes up a chat with Matt. On the flip side, there are insight-loaded details there that might be missed by a too-casual reader, like the brief speculation that some of the partially-transformed zombies are zombies made up to look more like humans, and some are humans made up to look more like zombies, and the two are virtually indistinguishable. (Which might you be?) The silliness runs
throughout; there is no shortage of light moments to balance
out the seriousness of the primary theme. But the theme is always there, just beneath the surface.
When I finished the book, I found myself thinking about ways that I might sometimes transform into a manipulative mad scientist, or a brainless zombie, or a codependent, selfish vampire, or an angry werewolf. The "Are You A Monster?" section at the very back will either make you laugh, think, or scratch your head in confusion... hopefully it, and the rest of the book, inspires more "think" than "head scratch," but I suspect it was designed for a little of both. I know the book gave me pause to reexamine my reliance on Christ in my daily life; it's so easy, like Luther, to fall back into looking like a wolf but trying to behave like a human. I'm planning to spend some time with Mikalatos' other wacky novel, Imaginary Jesus, very soon. If it inspires change like this one does, I know I'll be glad I did.
Even if you don't like monster movies, I recommend that you give Night of the Living Dead Christian a chance. It won't give you nightmares about monsters... except, maybe, the monster inside of you. But if it does, it also will show you the way to eliminate that dangerous creature once and for all.
We have a winner for the contest! Congratulations, Terry!
We have a copy of the book to give away! To enter the contest, simply leave a comment on this blog post (use an actual identity or at least click "Name/URL" and put in your name, so I'll know who you are) and then immediately send an email to me at contest@ScriptureMenu.com
so I'll have your email address. Make sure your comment and email reach
me before December 22, 2011. On December 22 I will randomly choose the winner, who will receive a free book certificate, redeemable at Christian bookstores or direct from Tyndale.
I was provided with a
review copy of this book by Tyndale House Publishers. The opinions
expressed in this review are mine alone.
Tyndale is running a great contest on the New Living Translation Facebook page. You'll need to like their page (and there's a lot to like about the NLT - my pastor preaches from it every week, and I use it to read devotionals to my kids every night!) and you can enter the contest. What are they giving away? Well, they're giving away a TON of hardcover Life Application Study Bibles. They're giving away a "family pack" of them to one random entrant every day - five Life Application Study Bibles of slightly different "flavors" (the "Guys" edition, the "Girls" edition, the "Student" edition, the regular unleaded edition, and the Large Print edition). And once a week, someone wins an iPad 2! Obviously, since there are daily prizes, there is no time to lose... you'll want to enter right away to have a chance at the good stuff. If you enter and win because you saw the contest here, please come back and let me know in the comments! I'd love it if someone fell deeper in love with the Word because of a contest they won because they saw it on my blog!
I appreciate how many times Tyndale is willing to run these little contests and give away copies of their translation. They don't have to... currently the NLT is the fourth best-selling translation (after the NIV, the KJV, and the NKJV, beating my beloved ESV which is at #5 - see the CBA list here) so obviously they are doing pretty well even without running contests to drum up publicity. They've been known to give away digital copies to all takers, as well. I appreciate a company that, although they obviously need to sell their translation in order to continue to be in business, is also willing to share free copies from time to time.
By the way... I've been a little bit quiet lately, but I do have some good things coming up - a review of a new book called Night of the Living Dead Christian next week, for one thing. There is also something I haven't mentioned here yet, but I should have: for the next few days, you can download an "offline" copy of the NIV to your mobile YouVersion for free! (Normally the NIV is only available if you have a data connection.) This means that you can have the NIV available to read without using your mobile phone's data allowance or being in reach of a WiFi hotspot. Just open up your YouVersion (or download the app, which is always free and which is available on pretty much every mobile platform), find the NIV in the list of translations, and click the "download" icon - there are instructions in the blog post about it if you need them.
Whatever you use to read the Bible... a NLT Study Bible you won from a contest, the NIV you downloaded from YouVersion, some other software or Web site, a dedicated device or an audio Bible... whatever you use, get the Bible into you. Get it rolling around in your mind. It will change your life for the better.
"That's the curriculum we use in our classes!" the pastor of the children's ministry at my church told me when I showed him the review copy of My First Hands-On Bible that I had received from Tyndale House Publishers. But it wasn't this specific book he was talking about—at the time, the book I was showing him had yet to hit retail shelves at all. He was talking about the "Hands-On Bible" curriculum for churches, but this new book is indeed from the same source. I told him that he was holding a brand-new release, and within thirty seconds he had calculated how much he would have to budget to buy enough copies of the book for every child in his classes to be able to use one on Sundays! That's how enthusiastic he is about the Hands-On Bible materials. He told me that when they were examining curricula to use in Sunday School, he had decided on a different curriculum and even ordered it, but then he saw what the Hands-On Bible curriculum had to offer and actually canceled his order for the other product to order Hands-On Bible. After using this book with my 3-year-old daughter for a night or two, I understood what he saw in their materials! I don't know that this book would be entirely appropriate for a church class—it's designed more for home use—but you certainly could use it in a church setting in a pinch, and for home use it would be hard to beat.
My First Hands-On Bible is very tightly structured. Each Bible story is taken directly from the New Living Translation of the Scriptures, word for word; it is not a reinterpretation of the Scripture text (or, at least, not any more than the NLT itself might be). Each lesson, including story, colorful illustrations, and some discussion materials and activities on the last page, is four or six pages long (a perfect length, as we found out, for bedtime reading to a preschooler). After the story proper, there is a section called "The Jesus Connection" (one or two sentences highlighting the relationship of the story to the person of Jesus), a section called "Let's Talk" containing two discussion questions, an activity introduced by a character named Cuddles the Lamb (at my church they actually have the puppet of Cuddles to use with their lessons!), another activity (or sometimes a song), and a short prayer introduced by a kangaroo named Pockets (there is also, by the way, a puppet of Pockets, although I don't think my church's ministry has picked one of those up yet). Several times in each lesson, there are small color-coded icons of handprints; these lead to micro-activities such as "Sarah laughed because she was happy. Let out a really happy laugh." and "Simeon was very old. Act like an old man leaning on a cane." These micro-activities are well-designed and well-spaced to keep the attention of a small child by breaking up the story a bit, and to provide something they can remember the story by later. The book itself is a 416-page hardback containing 85 stories.
The NLT is a good choice for a story Bible like this; I have trouble calling it a "Bible story book" because although it is a book of Bible stories, so is the Bible itself! And these stories are, after all, the exact same easy-to-read, easy-to-understand words you'd find in the NLT Bible you might have on your shelf. But it does not contain every single word of the NLT translation; in fact, some stories are highly abridged to fit into the book's format. The story of Jonah, for example, which fills four chapters in the Bible itself, is told in four parts, but the complex story of Esther, on the other hand, which fills 10 chapters in the Bible, is told in this book in only two short segments which each cover 3-4 chapters of the Bible text. So this book is not a traditional Bible story book, but it is not strictly a Bible either; it's something sort of in between. But it is obvious that it was designed by people who know how to engage the attention of children; the activities I called "micro-activites" above, for example, seem to come at perfect spots to keep attention from wandering. The "Jesus Connection" sections (example: "Jacob loved Joseph and gave him a coat. God loves us and sent us a special gift—Jesus.") do a pretty good job of bringing out a point in the story, much like a good pastor will do for his congregation, but on a kid level. The "Let's Talk" questions allow you to invite your child into the conversation and let them tell you what's going through their minds as they think about the story. And my child always wants to know what Cuddles "says" and what Pockets is going to pray. Add to that the cute watercolor-style illustrations, and you get a book that can make Bible story time fun (and educational) in ways that most Bible story books can't.
I did figure out early on that if I was going to use the book for bedtime reading, the activities at the end of the chapter were generally not going to be usable. Don't get me wrong, they're great activities... they're simple enough to do with a child, never require anything that you don't probably already have at home (and usually don't require any "props" at all), and relate to the story in ways that help bring it back to your child's attention. But the activities aren't things you can do as your child is winding down for bed. In fact, they resemble something that you might send home with a child in his "things to do this week" Sunday-School packet, and my guess is that they were created for that or are adapted from some materials created for that (some of them even start off with phrases like "As you do ________ with your child this week..."). Some of them are simple crafts, some of them are things to do as you're driving in the car or as the child is taking a bath... not things that happen before bed, and if you're reading a new story every night, some of those things might not even happen before the next story. I'm a fast reader, so normally when I get to that part of the night's reading, I skim through it to see if it's something we can feasably do; if I can tell it's probably not going to happen, I just skip those parts. I consider them optional; in a few cases we've been able to use them, and they've been quite effective, but usually we leave those parts out.
One part I never leave out is the prayer. I always save it for last, and when I say, "Pockets says..." my 3-year-old girl says back, "...it's time to pray!" The prayers are very short—one or two sentences—but they pertain to the topic of the lesson, and they are actual prayers, written to be prayed out loud to God. They are not lessons disguised as prayers; they are actual prayers, sometimes thanking God for something that was illustrated by the lesson, sometimes asking for help with a dilemma highlighted by the lesson which a child might face in his or her day. They are prayers that I, the parent, easily find myself praying from my own heart. It allows me a chance to pray humbly and honestly before my children, and that's a wonderful thing.
This is easily my all-time favorite Bible story book for children. As of this writing we have read forty-eight of the stories/lessons, and when we get to the end of the book, I'm not sure what we'll do next... maybe start over from the beginning! If I misplaced this book, I would immediately buy another copy; if a second volume is ever released, I'll be the first in line to pick it up. It's not often that you find a way to share treasures from the Bible with a preschooler in a way that is meaningful to them and immediately applicable to their lives; I can't say I've done exhaustive research into children's Bible literature, but I can say that this is hands-down the best I've ever seen for little ones. For under twenty dollars, you can spend the next three months sharing a Bible story every night with your child, and they'll love every minute of it. That's quite a bargain.
I was provided with a
review copy of this book by Tyndale House Publishers. The opinions
expressed in this review are mine alone.
For the next couple of weeks, I'll be featuring a book review every Friday morning. The books are pretty different from each other, but if you have eclectic tastes like I do, or if you're just curious what weird stuff I've been reading, stop back every week for Book Review Fridays!
At the end of this post I mentioned that my tween son and I were both looking forward to devouring the next installment of The Dopple Ganger Chronicles, The Great Mogul Diamond. Shortly after that, a review copy arrived in my mailbox! We were stoked! My son was so excited that I actually let him read it first, and that's saying something!
This series is visually one of the most strikingly original sets of novels to come out in some time. They combine traditional textual narrative (like in your Huckleberry Finn book) with graphic novel sections (like in your Batman comic books) to form a hybrid that is hard for either kids or adults to resist! The graphic novel sections don't interrupt or repeat the narrative sections; they actually carry the story forward, so if you skip a GN section (you won't, because they're great, but if you did) you would be missing part of the story. And the stories are of course terrific, but I'll get to that in a minute.
The Great Mogul Diamond is a little different than the previous two books. In the first two installments, The First Escape and The Secret of Indigo Moon, the setting is fairly static... within a short drive of Isambard Dunstan's School for Wayward Children. This story starts in that area, but quickly develops into a traveling mystery that takes Sadie, Saskia, Muzz Elliott, Erik Ganger, and Dorcas Potts on a trip from England all the way across France to Cannes in the French Riviera. The girls and Muzz travel by train; Dorcas and Eric follow by car. On the train ride, Muzz and the girls meet up with a friendly but mysterious man who seems to know an awful lot about them, and then they discover that someone is acting out scenes from the mystery novels Muzz has written in order to intimidate and frighten them. Dorcas and Eric, meanwhile, are chased, caught, imprisoned, helped to escape in a mysterious way, and finally meet back up with their friends in Cannes. I enjoyed the story maybe more than I enjoyed the other two, because the sense of travelogue seems to propel the story along in a way the more static settings in the other books do not. I enjoyed having Muzz Elliott back in this story, too; in Moon she is almost completely absent from the story.
The visuals are augmented, in this third book, by photographs, which lend a sense of realism to the story. Don't get me wrong: the illustrations in the first book are wonderful, and they certainly draw you into the story; those illustrations are present here as well. But scattered throughout the book are a dozen or two actual photographs, tweaked a bit to fit into the style of the rest of the artwork. I liked them a lot, although I did find it a bit jarring that the photograph of a "Restaurant" on a page opposite some narrative about the characters going to a "café" has a sign next to the door clearly showing that the name of the place is not the name in the story. That particular photograph does evoke a sense of going to a French café, and for that reason I love that it is there, but you would think that a half-hour with Photoshop could have reworked that picture so the café name in the story could have appeared on the sign. All nitpicking aside, though, the photos are a cool addition to this volume.
In the first two books, Sadie and Saskia have encounters with a mysterious figure known as Madame Raphael. The implication in the story is that she is an angel, although she won't directly admit it to them. In this book, Erik gets his chance to meet Madame Raphael, who helps him and Dorcas get out of a sticky situation mid-book. She also mentions someone else to Erik: The Man of Good-Bye Friday, who is mentioned to the twin sisters in the last chapter of Moon. Erik's "chance" meeting with this man, who is easily as mysterious as Madame Raphael, fills in some important blanks in Erik's knowledge of his past. He also appears on the very last page of the book, having a conversation with Madame Raphael, and the last sentence of the book actually brought tears to my eyes. (To avoid spoiling it for you, I won't tell you why... you'll know when you get there!)
My eleven-year-old son loved this book, as he has loved the other two. We actually never bought a copy of book one of the series (we checked it out from the library); when he finished this one, he asked me if we could buy and have a copy of it at home! I will certainly be making that purchase. I think it's fascinating to begin to see the patterns that author G. P. Taylor is weaving into the series: there is always a mystery to solve; the twin sisters always get temporarily separated somehow; there are always two plots happening at once, one involving Erik, with or without one of the sisters, and the other involving one or both of the girls; one character always has an encounter with the mysterious Madame Raphael and/or Man of Good-Bye Friday. The last chapter always contains a clue as to what the next story will be about. The villains keep popping up from previous books, too, and it's fun to continue to sketch out their history and find out what they've been up to since the last time we've seen them. Each book has a simplicity and straightforwardness to it, but the series as a whole is developing a more complicated mythology than any of the books on its own. Like any good book series, you don't have to read the first or second books to enjoy this one, but if you go back and read them and then read this one again, you'll understand things you didn't understand before. I think the simplicity of each story draws you in, but the multiple connections between the stories, and the larger spiritual story arc involving the two (so far) mysterious characters, are the hook that keeps you coming back for the next in the series.
The worst part about reading these books is that eventually, you come to the most recent book in the series, and then the wait for the next one seems to take forever! I wasn't able to find a projected publication date for the next in the series, but I did find an indication that there are at least three more books planned, which is great news! If your tweens love graphic novels but traditional novels not as much, pick up one of these books - any of the three would make a good entry point - and see what happens. But beware: you may wind up buying all three before you're done! They're that fun to read!
I was provided with a review copy of The Great Mogul Diamond by Tyndale House Publishers. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
I don't actually remember how I first ran across The Dopple Ganger Chronicles by G.P. Taylor about a year and a half ago. I probably either found it in the Christianbook.com catalog or the Lifeway Christian Stores catalog. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like these books before. They're not a novel in the traditional sense; many parts of the story are told in graphic novel format. But they aren't strictly graphic novels either, because there are many pages that are filled partly or completely with standard text, like a novel. If you flip through one of them, it almost looks like a very stylish novel with cartoon-style illustrations, but if you think you can read the story and skip the pictures, you're wrong. When the narrative ends at a cartoon section, it actually picks up in the cartoon! It's a great format for a book targeted at tween readers, even ones who are reluctant to read for pleasure. My then 9-year-old son enjoyed the first one very much! (He hasn't read book #2 yet, but he's planning to very soon!)
Book #1, The First Escape, introduces us to the main three characters: twin girls named Sadie and Saskia Dopple, and their friend, a boy named Erik Ganger. I should explain, for anyone who doesn't get the joke here, that "doppelgänger" is a word meaning a double or an alter-ego, so there's a "double meaning" to the series title. The girls are "Dopple" and the boy is "Ganger," and the girls are mirror-image twins so each is a doppelgänger of the other. All three of the children are orphans; they live in an orphanage for girls called Isambard Dunstan's School for Wayward Children (Erik lives there as sort of a part-time janitor; all of the other "wayward children" are girls.) The First Escape also introduces us to some other characters who turn up again in the second book: some of Sadie and Saskia's schoolmates, cranky and slightly shady headmistress Miss Rimmer, tyrannical cook Mrs. Omeron, an odd and threatening magician named The Great Potemkin, and, key to the first book, famed author Muzz Elliott. A very mysterious, ghostlike woman named Madame Raphael also appears quite briefly; her part is small in Escape but she plays a more important part in book #2, The Secret of Indigo Moon. I suspect her character will become more and more important as the series continues on.
I enjoyed The First Escape very much... so much that I actually blew through it probably a little more quickly than I should have, maybe missing a few details in the process. These books lend themselves best to reading at a leisurely pace, particularly in the graphic novel sections. The artwork is very stylish and, in some cases, quite detailed; the comic format is often used for action sequences where a lot is going on at once. The first book is sort of a mystery with some ghosts thrown in (most notably a seance which turns out to be a hoax). There's lots of action and lots of peril; the villains spend a lot of time chasing the heroes around in an attempt to kill them, but at the end, things basically turn out fine (more or less). The things that I don't like about the first book are that the story seems a bit unfocused, with two plot streams going on at once but never really dovetailing in a satisfying way, and that the children don't ever come upon an adult that they can truly trust. Madame Raphael almost qualifies, but her part is so brief and her character so unearthly and mysterious that she barely counts. It turns out that Muzz Elliott was probably the adult that the children could have trusted the most, but Muzz is so self-focused and unavailable that the children wind up having nobody to turn to except each other. It's not that there are no grown-ups; there are lots of grown-ups. It's just that most of them are bad guys, or at best, unreliable good or neutral characters.
The Secret of Indigo Moon does better on both counts. At the beginning of this second installment, the two girls have (sort of) been adopted by Muzz, or at least they have a family-style relationship with her, although they still spend a lot of their time living at Isambard Dunstan's School. Muzz does not appear in this story, but her presence as a trustworthy figure, sort of a safe home base, runs throughout. There are other sympathetic adult characters, too: a newspaper reporter named Dorcas Potts, and her uncle, Lord Gervez. I was happy that the young hero and heroines had finally found some people they could trust. It's important that kids understand that adults are not the enemy, and in the first book it almost felt like that to me. Some of the villains from the first book return in the second book, and some new bad guys appear. And Madame Raphael has a much more important part to play; I'll get back to her in a minute.
I enjoyed how this book deepens the characters and their relationships with each other; the world they move about in seems more real and nuanced in Moon than in Escape. Like the first book, this story is about a band of thieves; the girls get separated, Sadie with Erik and Saskia on her own. But the individual stories seem to merge back together in a more satisfying way in book #2 than in book #1; Sadie and Erik's side adventure serves to advance the plot this time, where in the first book it seemed almost contrived, like a way to get the twins separated so Saskia was out on a limb by herself with nobody else to turn to. But to me, the biggest difference has to do with Madame Raphael and her increased role. Before I go into the details I will mention that her identity is left mysterious at the end of the first book, so if you want to avoid spoilers, you might want to quit reading now and return to this review once you've enjoyed the books on their own merits.
In Escape, Madame Raphael doesn't do very much. She mysteriously appears in Saskia's room, gives her an etiquette lesson, leaves her a key with no real explanation, and disappears, and that's pretty much it. But her appearance obviously made a big impact on Saskia, because in book #2, Saskia seems to think of her in religious terms, to the point of praying to her. But she actually appears several times, and by the end of the book she has implied that she is an angel (one of the angels who was present at the birth of Jesus, in fact) and told Saskia that she should not pray to Madame Raphael, but to someone she refers to as The Companion. The approach is soft-spoken and almost mystical, inviting without being demanding, and I think it's quite effective in a book that is as enjoyable for a tween with no religious upbringing at all as it is for a tween who grew up in church. I look forward to finding out how that character develops over time.
G. P. Taylor, author
Both books contain a quote from a BBC show calling G. P. Taylor "the new C. S. Lewis." I'm not sure there is a direct comparison; the work of both is compelling, but Lewis was never much of an action scene writer, and Taylor doesn't seem to be that much for symbolism, which was a big thing for Lewis. Like Lewis, Taylor is Anglican (although I don't think C. S. Lewis was actually a minister, while Taylor is). Taylor rolls out fiction much more regularly than Lewis typically did; Lewis also wrote many scholarly works and works of apologetics. But Taylor certainly has a gift for engaging and holding his audience's attention, and the hybrid novel/graphic novel format is quite exciting. I have recommended these books to children's librarians, and I would recommend them to any parent of a child who enjoys books containing fantasy elements (Narnia, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, etc.) But I would even recommend these books to parents of children who do not like to read. The pacing is fast, but the plots are complex enough that they invite you to participate in the story. This is good stuff. I'm looking forward to book #3, The Great Mogul Diamond, scheduled for release in May!
After I wrote and posted this review, I gave the book to my 11-year-old son. He read it immediately, and at the end of two days he had finished it... TWICE! He can't wait for book #3 (and he wants me to buy him the first one, which we got from the library)!
I was provided with a review copy of The Secret of Indigo Moon by Tyndale House Publishers. I read The First Escape before requesting the review copy of Moon. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
My son Mikey will turn 11 years old in April. When he was five years old, we bought him a fabulous Bible for small children called the NIrV Super Heroes Bible (you can read more about that Bible purchase in this post). That Bible was amazing for him at the time, but now that he's a bit older, the NIrV translation is starting to feel a bit pedestrian to him. The sentences are choppy because they are shortened on purpose for beginning readers; when he was five years old this was an advantage, but at ten, he reads very well... and as he approaches his teenage years, I think the cartoonish illustrations may be looking a little childish to him, too. When I heard that the tween-targeted iShine Bible was coming out, I requested a review copy right away! I was hoping it would be something he could enjoy at the age he is now as much as, or even more than, he enjoyed his Super Heroes Bible back when he was little. And I think I can safely say that he's loving the iShine Bible!
There are actually two slightly different versions of the iShine Bible: the "for Boys" version that Mikey has, and a "for Girls" edition which I have not actually held a copy of. The contents of the book are not gender-specific, and I'm guessing that the only difference is the cover itself (predictably, "Backstage Blue" for boys and "Lip Sync Pink" for girls). The cover is a nice soft faux leather, very flexible and comfortable to hold; our boy-targeted copy has a picture of a boy playing a guitar on it (you can see part of him through the triangular hole in the cardboard packaging in the picture above). Most of the Bible is printed in black and white on the traditional thin Bible paper, but there are some special color sections inside; I'll talk more about them in a minute, but right now I'll say that they carry on the trendy tween theme, with pictures of Christian rock band Mission Six and several other musicians and speakers from the iShine universe (learn more about iShine at iShineLive.com). There are also QR codes to scan with your cell phone (they take you to relevant videos and other materials), and even the pictured artists' and speakers' Twitter handles. The whole thing has a fresh, trendy feel to it; I imagine in five or ten years the supplemental material might seem outdated to the trendiest kids, but by that time (hopefully) they will have developed a love for God's Word and graduated up to an adult Bible anyway. But even if those iShine features begin to show their age at some point, the Bible itself is of course timeless.
The Bible text itself is the New Living Translation, Genesis to Revelation. My son loves it. He thinks it is much more readable than the choppy NIrV in his other Bible. For myself, I did some side-by-side comparison between it and my beloved ESV translation, and although I still prefer the ESV for my own use, I really liked what I read in the NLT text. I actually wouldn't recommend the ESV for the average teenager or tween, because I think it might be too complex language-wise to be fun for them to read; I would heartily recommend the NLT for a tween or young teenager, though.
My son's favorite part of the iShine Bible is called "The Bible Talks About..." in the front of the Bible in a section called the "iShine Index." It's about a 40-page topical list of question after question that a tween might want a Biblical answer for. Some of the questions are pretty straightforward: "Smoking looks cool. Should I try it?" "Is it right to treat people differently based on how they look?" "I dislike one of my teachers." "Is swearing okay or not?" Some of them are things that adults wonder about as much as kids do: "Does God really listen when we pray?" "Is there really a hell?" "Can I trust God?" "Why is there evil in the world?" And there are some that, as a dad who is also a former teenager, I find positively heartbreaking: "I can't do anything right." "I'm afraid of dying." "I'm being abused. Is it my fault?" "My friend is hurting. What should I do?" "I wish I weren't so afraid." "I feel dirty. I'm not good enough for anybody." Each question is followed by a quoted Scripture verse, a short paragraph giving an answer to the question, and an "Other verses..." section with several Scripture references that are relevant to the topic. I love the sensitivity of the questions themselves (just reading the questions takes me back to how it felt to be a Christian kid growing up in a confusing world!), and I appreciate the thoughtful way the questions are answered. I also love, both here and elsewhere in the iShine Bible, that the Scripture references always have page numbers next to them. Why assume that a child knows how to find Ephesians 4:31-32 when you can help them out a bit and tell them to look right on page 897? And the page numbers are really easy to spot on the pages, too, right up next to the traditional book+chapter at the top of each page of the Bible text. My son liked this "The Bible Talks About..." section so much that he read it straight through the first time he picked up the iShine Bible; that's how well-written it is.
There are three more articles in the iShine Index: "What Is the Bible?", "Finding Your Identity in Jesus", and "Growing In Faith". All of these articles are written in the same warm, friendly style as the "The Bible Talks About..." section. They don't talk down to the reader, but they aren't over the head of a 10-year-old, either. I think the execution is fabulous.
I mentioned before that there are some colored sections midstream in the Bible text; these are of a thicker paper than the traditional Bible paper that the rest of the pages are made of, and they contain some tween-friendly design elements, but they aren't just about style and flash. There are three of them, and they are each focused on a specific thing: "value" in section 1 ("What matters to you?"), "identity" in section 2 ("Who are you?"), and "purpose" in section 3 ("Why are you here?") Did you notice that the initials let you know that you are a "V.I.P." to God? Each of these could easily be used just as it is by a youth pastor as a message to his youth group. They are surprisingly dense with information, but the page design and typography make them so visually interesting that you almost don't notice that you're learning something as you read! And the three topics are well-chosen for tweens... in fact, if more of us adult Christians got a firm grasp on what really matters in our lives, who we are in Christ, and what God has created us to accomplish with our lives, we would be much more effective Christians. I hope a lot of young people get a great head start on those topics through reading this Bible.
In the back of the iShine Bible, there are some very interesting lists: "Great Chapters of the Bible," "Great Stories of the Bible," and "Great Verses of the Bible to Memorize." These lists are short but sweet; the chapters/stories/verses are well-chosen, and page numbers are included to make it simple to find the right spot. I suspect that these short sections are going to be the antidote for many a "bored" teenager's idle afternoon, and I think that's great! Traditional Bibles have a concordance and maps in the back; those features have not been included in this Bible, but in an age of computer technology, I'm not sure those things are as necessary as they might have been in years past. Young people certainly won't miss them; the topical approach will seem much more immediate and relevant to them.
If I had to come up with something to criticize about the iShine Bible, it would be the small print. The Bible itself is small; at 6.13" X 4.13" I can nearly cover the whole thing with one hand. The compact size is nice to carry, but it does mean that the font used for the Bible text is pretty tiny. I asked my son if he even noticed it, and if it bothered him. He did notice the small text, but he wasn't bothered by it: "I wouldn't recommend it for someone who wears glasses, though," he added. This 40-year-old who wears contact lenses can make it out all right, so younger eyes should have no problem, but if you see your tween reading it in low light, make them turn on a lamp so they can avoid eyestrain.
The "This Bible belongs to" page in the very front of the iShine Bible says that it is "...a reminder that I am loved, valued, and called by name." I can't think of a better description of the Bible... any Bible. But this Bible goes to great lengths to approach pre-teens on a level they find interesting and engaging and bring the truths of God's Word to them, organized in such a way that it's easy to discover something they find relevant and useful. My 10-year-old loves it. If your child is a two-digit that doesn't yet end with "-teen", I think they'll love it too.
Want a quick tour of the iShine Bible? Here's the video you see if you scan the cell phone QR code on the title page.
I was provided with a review copy of this book by Tyndale House Publishers. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
I know I'm in good company when I say that I've loved the Chronicles of Narnia ever since I was a little boy; I'm guessing that a majority of the people reading this probably have similar stories. I was a young teenager when I first discovered them, and I still have my original set of the seven books. I remember being so excited by what most people would consider a clear allegory of Christ's death and resurrection in the first book, and then puzzled when the rest of the books really contained very little that resembled any stories or characters from the Bible. But I loved the books anyway, and as I grew older I read more and more of C.S. Lewis' work... actually, I read everything I could get my hands on, from the Space Trilogy to his amazing works of apologetics to The Screwtape Letters and even a few things he wrote before becoming a Christian. In college I literally read everything by him that they had in the university library.
I've always been so impressed with how methodical and thorough of a thinker Lewis was. That's one reason the Chronicles seem to be a little bit of an anomaly; they seem to be related mostly by the geography of the world of Narnia and the person of Aslan Himself, and frankly, in a few of the books Aslan barely even appears. And then there are other odd things in the books... Father Christmas, for goodness sakes? What's with that? Why would they even know about Christmas in Narnia anyway? I think I basically just sort of wrote those things off, thinking that Lewis was writing the books to entertain children, or maybe just sort of to blow off steam, and that there was not too much rhyme or reason to the whole thing.
That is, I thought that way... until now.
Michael Ward's new book The Narnia Code presents a theory of what holds the books together which rocked my whole concept of the series, and which, to a fan of C.S. Lewis' entire body of work, has a ring of truth to it. When I started reading, you could have colored me intrigued; by the end, you can color me convinced.
Basically, Ward believes that Lewis, who was a professor of medieval literature, used the medieval concept of the universe as a framework for the series. Before Copernicus came along with a whole different idea of the way the universe was organized, it was believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and there were seven "planets" that circled around it in concentric orbits (the "planets" were the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn... our understanding of the moon and sun as different from those other planets didn't appear until a bit later, and planets past Saturn were not discovered until the invention of the telescope). Each of the planets was associated with a mythological deity, and those gods was associated with certain things. Each book is based around the superstitious and mythological concepts surrounding one of these planets/gods. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is, for example, the "Jupiter" book, because Jupiter was considered the god of joviality (which explains why when joy begins to return to Narnia as winter breaks, the jolly Father Christmas appears), and Prince Caspian, which is all about war, is based on Mars, who was the god of war. The planets and books line up quite nicely; if you're interested in finding out more details, I'll refer you to the official Web sites at the bottom of this article, and to the book itself (click here to purchase it from ChristianBook.com).
The Michael Ward book itself was, if I understand it correctly, based on the BBC film of the same name (discussed below), and the BBC program was based on Ward's earlier book, Planet Narnia. I have not yet read Planet Narnia (I plan to take a look at it very soon), but my understanding is that it is a more scholarly book, while The Narnia Code is more targeted at the layman. The first few chapters lay out the way Ward came to make his discovery of the link between the books and medieval astronomy, and then it goes straight into explaining the thematic elements of each book, one at a time. I found the initial few chapters a little long for my taste; but once he finally got into the themes of the individual books, I was so hooked! In addition to being a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, I've long been a fan of ancient Greek/Roman mythology, and the connections seem obvious once they're pointed out. It made me want to go back and re-read the Chronicles themselves again, to sort of sniff out the links for myself. The book is an enjoyable read for any fan of the series; you'll want to read it a chapter at a time and digest the information before moving on to the next one.
(For the record, Ward makes it clear, as Lewis did, that the books are most definitely about Jesus Christ; Ward is not trying to say that Aslan is Zeus or anything like that. The idea is that Lewis used the planets and their mythological associations to create the atmosphere for his stories and to point up different aspects of Christ's character, not that Aslan represents a different pagan god in each book.)
Shortly after I read the book, I was at the Christian bookstore near my house, and to my surprise, I spotted the DVD of the BBC program on the shelf! My understanding was that it would not be available until early 2011, but there it was! I snagged a copy and watched it with my family. Surprisingly enough, the DVD contains very little information about the whole "planets" idea; most of it is a biography of Lewis himself. The main program doesn't even give the whole list of "this book matches this planet" associations (although you can find that in the DVD bonus features). I was expecting more about the planets theory, but I found the biography of Lewis interesting and, in a few cases, it even presented information about Lewis that I had not heard before (and I've read quite a bit about Lewis over the years). I enjoyed the DVD just as much as I enjoyed the book, although in a different way; the two complement each other nicely.
If you love the Chronicles of Narnia books, you will at least find The Narnia Code interesting. You may agree with Ward, as I do, or you may think he's a crackpot trying to make a buck off Lewis' legacy, and you may even find the idea that Lewis drew part of his inspiration from stories of pagan gods and goddesses vaguely offensive. But the theory is compelling and the evidence is extensive, and as a Narnia fan, you owe it to yourself to look into these books. It will change the way you see the series forever.
I was provided with a review copy of the book version by Tyndale House Publishers. I purchased the BBC DVD on my own. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
When I was a freshman at Oral Roberts University in the late 1980s, one of the first things I learned was to hold doors open for the young ladies. There was no etiquette class for freshmen, no university-wide rule, no obvious reason for this at all. There was just a culture of the young men taking care of the young ladies. For anyone who wasn't born yet then who might be reading this, let me emphasize: this was the eighties, not the fifties. Holding a door open for a young lady when you weren't on a date (or maybe even when you were on a date) was certainly not the societal norm. But I think I learned more about servanthood and about respect for the opposite sex from that one tiny repeated act than anything else before, or maybe even since. What's more, the young ladies expected that kind of treatment; some would even refuse to go thorough a door with a young man unless he opened and held it for her. Training girls to understand that they deserve dignity and respect and should expect it from the males in their lives is a main focus of James Dobson's new book, Bringing Up Girls. To some the book may seem unforgivably old-fashioned in its treatment of the fair sex. Others will find something to get offended by, and some may even be astonished at some of the ideas expressed (I know I was!) But I think if you open your mind a little bit, forgive Dr. Dobson for some attitudes that may seem at first blush a little too much like something out of Leave It To Beaver for the twenty-first century, and look at the heart of what he is saying, you'll get some valuable insight before you're done.
This book is, for most intents and purposes, a follow-up to Dr. Dobson's 2001 book, Bringing Up Boys. If you've read that book, you will see a lot of similarities, particularly in the early chapters. Dr. Dobson seems to like to break the ice by including a few "lighthearted" letters from "fans" (in this case, some of them were unintentionally funny letters from child "anti-fans" who did not appreciate Dr. Dobson's stance on corporal punishment in previous books!) and telling a few stories about childhood. He has a grandfatherly sentimentality that is pretty hard to resist. But that sentimental side doesn't stop him from being brutally honest about some things, and that made some of the later chapters a tough read for me.
Like Bringing Up Boys, this book contains a lot of statistics about its subject: in this case, females of all kinds (not just little girls, but also teenagers and even grown women.) The basic theme of the second and third chapters, in fact, is that society is a dangerous place for females. There are extensive discussions about such things as the fragility of a girl's ego, the harmful effect of certain things in media, the aggressive marketing of those things to females, the accessibility of materials on the Internet through both computers and portable devices such as cell phones, the moral anti-absolutism of our 21st-century culture, and cultural changes such as the acceptance of public nudity. There was one section I found particularly difficult to get through - it was about "cutting," a practice in which people (often teenagers) will physically cut their skin with a knife or other implement in an attempt to dull emotional pain with physical pain. I've known that cutting existed for some time, but revisiting it in such detail was chilling. I found myself wading through those chapters as though I was hip-deep in toxic water; the information is awful to be exposed to, but you've got to get through it to get where you're going.
Then sometimes I would come to a spot in the book that seemed like a breath of fresh air. When I got to chapter 16 ("Good News About Girls") it was such a relief after spending the two previous chapters wallowing in the filth of media culture. The odd thing is that the whole point of the book is that the danger of a girl falling into those dire straits is greatly reduced by the presence of loving, involved parenting as she grows up. The kind of negative statistics in the "hip-waders" chapters would seem to be the kind of thing you would use to convince someone to read the book. Once I'm reading it, I've already decided that I want some help and advice; I don't need to be convinced. All that to say, I think maybe the book dwells on the negative a little more than is necessary; some parts are wastelands of discouraging numbers and trends. You can go for chapters and chapters and never actually learn anything practical to use in your parenting. Sometimes I felt like saying, "Okay, Dr. Dobson, you made your point twelve pages ago. Growing up is hard for girls. Can we get on to how I can help my girl now, please?"
And of course, the "how can I help" information is there, too. In fact, I would encourage any mother of a girl to at least take a look at chapters 5 and 7, and any father of a girl should at least take a look at chapters 8, 9, and 10. Chapter 8, in particular, is a must-see for dads: it is a series of heart-rending first-person stories, told by young women in college, of the huge effect their fathers have had on their lives. The basic message of the book is that girls need to be endowed with a sense that they are valuable, not commodities, and the girl's parents are in the primary position to do that for her as she is growing up. If we parents can help our daughters understand that they are valuable persons, they will be less likely to do things like using their sexuality to get what they want or trying to hold on to the affection of a boyfriend who is finished with the relationship. The idea is not to exert control over females, but to free them to control themselves as adult women. To empower them to not feel like they have to resort to drastic measures in order to get what they want. To free them to want what they really want, instead of what society all around them screams that they should want.
There are a number of opinions Dr. Dobson expresses in the book that strike me as controversial. He is against mothers of young children working outside of the home unless there is a dire need, for example. He is against same-sex couples raising children. He is against co-ed sports, particularly with teenagers (he believes that having members of the opposite sex on the team changes the dynamics of how the team works together and reduces the value of the whole thing for everybody). He believes in sexual abstinence before marriage for both genders. He says that casual sex with multiple partners physically rewires the brain and makes the eventual relationship with a lifelong partner less satisfying in the end. He seems to believe that body piercing is psychologically related to cutting (really? What about one earring per ear? Is that cutting? What about two? or three? Why is a belly-button different from an earlobe?) I could see many people being turned off by some of those assertions - although presumably, the kind of person who is going to strongly disagree with those kinds of things is probably not going to be reading books by James Dobson anyway. I personally have very little trouble with most of them, and I see at least a grain of truth in each. But if any of those statements bothers you more than a little tiny bit, you might seriously consider whether you want to get into this book.
I found his discussion of what he calls the "princess movement" particularly interesting. This is the same thing that I've referred to for years now as the "pink aisle"... you know, the toy aisle that is almost blindingly pink because it's where all of the "girl toys" are. These days, a lot of the "pink aisle" toys have Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella, Pocahontas, and other "princesses" from the Disney repertoire on them, and little girls eat them up. He characterizes the movement as a (mostly) positive thing, giving girls an outlet for their natural "girliness" and showing them that it's OK to not be the same as the boys. However, he does criticize culture's obsession with "beauty" in a lengthy section that, oddly, turns a very sympathetic eye on celebrities Anna Nicole Smith and Farrah Fawcett, both of whom suffered during their lifetimes because they were physically desirable (he quotes Farrah as saying, "How would you like to be photographed every day of your life?") The general sense is that a girl needs to be taught that she is a princess, yes, but not only because of physical beauty; she is a princess because she is a child of God.
Chapter 11 discusses the Father Daughter Purity Ball movement. This is a kind of formal party, sort of like a prom, to which dads take their daughters. Dads and daughters dress up in formal clothes, they dance, and the daughter pledges to her dad that she will keep her virginity until marriage, and the dad pledges back that he will help her protect her virginity. That probably oversimplifies things a bit, but that's the main gist of it. I had heard of this before, and it has always seemed a bit odd to me, maybe a little bit creepy... and this chapter did not change my mind. The whole thing extends the (perfectly okay) princess fantasy unnaturally from childhood nearly into young adulthood, and uses it to convince a girl to sign a contract that specifies what they will do sexually. But the way I see it, no document is going to change someone's mind in the heat of passion. And honestly, I'm not really sure that it's the father's job to "protect" his daughter's virginity; I think it's the father's job to teach the girl what she needs to know so that she will guard her own virginity. I'm going to teach my daughter what I believe the Word of God says about sexuality, but I'm not going to stand out on my porch with a shotgun waiting for her to come home from a date (I probably will wait up, though!) If she makes the wrong choice and has sex with a boy, what good will a written, signed contract do anyway? It will only make her feel guilty, and she'll hide the whole thing from me. That's not productive. It seems to me that taking your daughter to one of these things amounts to doing something outlandish to make up for years of not properly training her like you should have been doing all along. I'm sure in many or most cases it's not like that, and if one day my daughter asks me to take her to one of these, certainly I'll do it, but it seems over the top to me. Dr. Dobson's take on them is very positive, but personally, the whole idea strikes me as weird.
I had a similar reaction to the charm bracelet story in Chapter 17. Essentially, the story is about parents encouraging their daughter to stay away from any affectionate contact with boys until she is sure of the one she is going to marry. This includes kissing, saying "I love you," and even holding hands with a boy in addition to getting engaged and getting married. Their encouragement is in the form of a charm bracelet, the (rather expensive) charms of which must be given away to the first boy with which she has that sort of contact. The girl in the story, as it turns out, was wise enough to use that gentle pressure put on her by loving parents to keep her out of trouble, and after she was married, she still had the whole charm bracelet. But I have to wonder: is this bribery? Is this replacing a strong moral upbringing with a materialistic love for jewelry? It seems extreme to me, especially penalizing their daughter for even holding a boy's hand. (For that matter, what if she is in a class at school and everybody is holding hands as part of a lesson? What if they are holding hands in Sunday School for a prayer time? In my family, we hold hands to pray over our meals. Would those situations count if she happened to be next to a boy?) It's not my style to manipulate someone by giving them a gift with strings attached. Then again, maybe that's why I'm not a psychologist. Maybe that's the language that a little girl speaks most fluently, and I just don't know it yet.
All in all, though, I enjoyed the book very much. I didn't enjoy the "toxic statistic" parts, but I enjoyed the rest of it, even the parts with which I had a difference of opinion, because I enjoy seeing someone else's perspective. I enjoyed hearing about Dr. Dobson's daughter Danae, in part because her love of dogs reminded me of my little girl. In fact, it wasn't just my daughter that I saw reflected in the pages... I sometimes saw my wife there, too! I came away from the book understanding that for girls and women, relationships are the number one key to everything. If I can maintain a healthy relationship with my girl, she has a way-better-than-average chance at leading a very successful, happy life. If daughters of loving fathers look for a mate who is like their dad, I want to make it next to impossible for my daughter to find a man who will measure up, not because I want her to be alone (I don't) but because I want her to be with someone who loves her, and who loves God, at least as much as I do.
Are Dr. Dobson's perspectives old-fashioned? Sometimes, maybe... or maybe they're not old-fashioned, but a jarring reminder of a higher standard that should be held toward and by women. Girls and women are valuable and precious, and should be treated as such. If we all treated our daughters like princesses (not the spoiled kind, but the kind who know that royalty also comes with responsibility), and they all acted like princesses... wouldn't the world be a great place to be? When my princess grows up, I hope she still has the same attitude she had the other day when she wanted her mama to take her somewhere. "We can't go right now, sweetie," my wife told her. "Daddy has the car." My little girl replied simply, "Okay. I fly!"
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Tyndale Publishing.
I've been excited about the What's In The Bible video series for months... ever since the first time Phil Vischer mentioned it in his blog. When Tyndale House Publishers agreed to forward me a complimentary review copy ahead of the release date, I was so thrilled I could hardly stand it! We are big fans of VeggieTales at my house; I have a 9-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl, and we started buying VeggieTales videos for him when he was a baby, before they were even making DVDs of the show. Now we have every episode (except Pistachio, which just came out), and my little girl asks for VeggieTales by name. When Phil Vischer's book about the VeggieTales days came out a few years ago, I read it with sadness and hope. Phil has been working on a few things since then (most notably Jelly Telly), but this is a big one. In a 5-minute introduction to the video series, Phil explained that this is a return to basics for him, going back to his "...original call to lead kids through the Bible and bring it to life for them." And I would say that this series is likely to fulfill that call even better, dare I say it, than VeggieTales ever did.
So far, two videos have been released in the planned series of 13 total. Each video is just under an hour long, and that hour is broken up into two 30-minute "episodes" which would be a perfect length for a kids' class at church (or a TV segment on Saturday morning!) The idea is to cover the basics of the whole Bible through the course of the series. Here's Phil explaining it:
I took the review copy home so the first time I watched it was with my wife and kids. We had a great time watching it, and I was pretty impressed with not only the content, but also the production quality. I spent a few years working in television back a decade and a half ago; I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I worked at it long enough to understand a few basic things about TV production. And I can tell you that these shows are well thought out and executed. One of the first things I noticed was how bright and vivid the colors are, not only of the puppets and the animated segments, but even of the live set that Phil is on. The puppet sets have clever details in them, like a cowboy hat hanging on a hook on the wall behind the country music singing cowboy, or the silly "A is for Abraham, B is for Babel, C is for Caesar" signs on the wall in a Sunday school classroom. There's even chalk & erasers for the puppet's chalk board! Often the set is virtual, with the puppet performance over a cartoon-animated background, which makes for some surreal moments like a black Gospel song where the soloist is a puppet and the choir members backing him are an animated cartoon... of puppets! There is even a pirate character who is a puppet, but who has a parrot sidekick who is animated. Fun! And a clever and fresh use of the technology.
The editing style is fast and interesting; often puppets on different sets converse with one another, so what you're looking at on the screen is constantly changing, but it's not frenzied enough to be distracting to anyone who grew up in this YouTube/music video/sound byte era. I loved the camera work, particularly the fact that during some songs and segments the camera is never still... it is always slowly moving to the left or right, so it gives the scene some movement, even when the background isn't actually changing. It all contributes to giving the show its own personality and setting it apart from other kids TV shows out there.
The puppet characters themselves are a lot of fun. Most of them are instantly recognizable to anyone who has been watching Jelly Telly. See for yourself:
Jelly Telly fans will already know Buck Denver, Clive & Ian, Sunday-school Lady, Chuck Wagon, and the couch ladies, Agnes & Winnifred. I don't remember ever hearing Brother Louie's name on Jelly Telly (although he does appear in the Jelly Telly theme song), and I don't remember seeing the vaguely Shrek-voiced Captian Pete (the pirate with the animated parrot) on Jelly Telly at all, but they well may have been there. The puppets are fun to look at and listen to; each one has a very distinctive voice (which apparently are all supplied by Vischer... the man's a kid-show machine!), and they all have fairly specific roles to play on the show. In general, they have their own "home" sets... Clive & Ian are in a jungle, Sunday-school Lady is in a Sunday-school class, Buck Denver is on his news set... but occasionally they will go to a new set for a song or to visit another character (Buck's news set seems particularly prone to invasions by other characters). Phil Vischer is himself a character (not a puppet), and he sort of acts as a ringmaster for all the craziness. My kids loved it all - my little girl cracks up every time she sees Buck riding the space bike in the opening segment, and my little boy loves the jokes and gags.
Familiar references to kid culture are scattered through the videos... there's the mention of several children's books that you saw in the clip above, for example, and there are also mentions of Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer and Disney's Finding Nemo (used as an illustration but not mentioned by name). And the references go beyond secular culture; in answer to the question "Why do we put all of those Bible stories in one book?" the puppet characters fire off the names of a bunch of stories children are probably familiar with from church lessons and coloring pages, and in one spot where Noah's Ark is mentioned, a child voice says the animals came in "by twosies" (a phrase from a well-known Sunday-school song about Noah), The Sunday-school lady replies that that is correct "...except for the ones they used as food... those came in by sevensies." (Phil has been known to throw in fairly obscure Bible details from time to time... remember in Dave and the Giant Pickle where Archibald/King Saul's recommendation for Dave was "Couldn't you just play your harp, and I'll throw things at you"?)
The cultural references aren't just for children, either. Their parents will appreciate references to one of Carrie Underwood's hit songs, and comic book hero The Green Lantern (kind of a crossover dad/kid reference there). There's also a very blatant rebuttal of the book/movie The Da Vinci Code which, at this point almost 4 years after the movie came out, may not be that topical for the kids, but I wouldn't be too surprised if some of their moms and dads weren't still wondering about it!
And what's more appealing to kids and their parents than silly gags? There are running gags, like the way Buck Denver always says "...man of NEWS!" whenever someone says his name, or Ian's obsession in the first episode with "PONIES!!" Then there are more subtle jokes, like Dr. Schniffenhausen's answer to the question "What is the Bible?" ("wood, black oil, & cow" ...when he says it, it actually sort of makes sense!) and car-trip-boy Michael's question why his breath didn't get fresher when he licked a "testa-mint". And there are plenty of sight gags, too; my favorite is the extreme double-take Abram does when God taps him on the shoulder. Hey, when you have wacky lines like "A sofa doesn't have metaphors!" and "There's a newsman on the floor! What's he reporting on, ants?" you know that you're going to find something to laugh at eventually!
VeggieTales has always been known for having great songs. The What's In The Bible series is clearly not going to be upstaged by vegetables! Give a listen to the ultra-catchy theme song (be forewarned: you will be singing about whether the "Bi-a-ble" is "reli-a-ble" and whether Buck Denver's "hair is pli-a-ble" for hours after you listen to this):
(That's "...Who knows our names and numbers hairs," by the way. I had probably heard it nine or ten times before that sank in.)
Songs are scattered throughout the videos. Sometimes they are brief and silly, like Pirate Pete's song about the canon of Scripture: "Oh, I've got a canon and I like to shoot, it's really big and black but I think it's kinda cute..." (yes, he's standing on his pirate ship next to a two-N cannon!) Sometimes the song is a major part of the content of the lesson; Chuck Wagon's song about Exodus/Moses not only covers pretty much the entire book of Exodus, but it also contains the funniest Country music description of the plagues of Egypt I've ever heard! Sunday-school Lady sings a song about idolatry that explains that anything we value more than we value God is an idol to us, and the specific things she mentions in the song are surprisingly grown-up things: money, credit, romance, cars, sports and travel are all named off one by one in a space of not more than 15-20 seconds. A little something for Mom and Dad to chew on, there!
I think my favorite song on the two videos is (Louie Armstrong-clone) Brother Louie's black Gospel number "Hallelujah, Look What God Can Do." If you loved "Second Chances" from the VeggieTales Jonah movie, you'll love this one too.
I have to say that the books of the Bible aren't approached exactly as I expected. I was expecting "In The Beginning" to be a straight-out summary of the book of Genesis, and "Let My People Go" to be a summary of Exodus. Although the raw Bible-story material does appear there, it's generally not attacked head-on right at the first; in fact, you're twelve minutes into the first show before you even get to the beginning of the Bible, and even then it's not Genesis 1:1... it's the Table of Contents! Instead, in general these videos approach the Bible from a thematic standpoint. The idea is to point out the lesson that the Bible is trying to teach us, rather than myopically focusing on the details all the time. Sort of like a Bible Overview course for third graders. They talk quite a bit about important Theological words like "covenant", "salvation", "redemption", and "patriarch"; terms for Bible-related things like "Septuagint", "testament", and "canon", and the origins and meanings of the names of each of the books. They also talk about things like the different categories of books in the Bible (the Pentateuch, the Historical books, Prophecy books, Gospels, Epistles, and so on) and why different Bibles may have different numbers of books (Bibles containing the Apocrypha vs. Bibles that do not). They ask and answer a number of "big questions" like "What is the Bible?" and "Who Wrote The Bible?" (my favorite answer, given by a child: "nobody") and "Who is Moses?" and "Who picked the books to be in the Bible?" Often there is a short segment in which kids (with lesser or greater degrees of success, depending on the question) try to give answers (some of those kids are pretty smart!)
Sometimes they stop and explain a detail that a child might ask about: in a puppet show about Creation, God is represented as a cloud, and they stop to explain briefly that we don't know what God looks like, so a cloud is a pretty fair placeholder. Ever wonder why the Bible calls God "He"? Why God created people? Those kinds of questions are addressed, and often in a way that your pastor could preach in the adult service. For example, Sunday-school Lady teaches us that God created people because God is three things: creative, personal, and relational, and God wanted a relationship with us! In the discussion about sin, we find out that God wanted to save us from three things: the "stain" of sin, the "power" of sin, and the "presence" of sin. If that seems about as clear as mud to you, watch the video and you'll see how well those three categories cover things!
The videos cover some touchy subjects, too, and I think they cover them well. There is a discussion about the inspiration of Scripture, centering around the difference between God's "words" and God's "Word" (synopsis: the "words" were written by Men inspired by God, and the truth they contain is God's "Word"). I've read quite a bit about the differences between a "literal" word-for-word style of translating the Bible and the more paraphrased thought-for-thought style, and this discussion comes close to that territory without actually saying anything that should offend either camp. There is a discussion about how long Creation took... 24-hour days or figurative "days" that could be much longer periods. I think Phil handles the topic quite well, presenting ideas from either side of this hot-button issue (again, without actually taking a side, allowing parents or teachers to discuss it further with their children) and concluding that "Genesis isn't about 'how' but 'Who'" (essentially, it isn't a book about science, but a book about God). I'd say those hard topics are handled quite well, and I see no reason why any children's church class or home should object to the open and honest way that they are approached, allowing teachers to provide further information if they so desire.
It is also helpful that each show starts out with a quick summary of some of the high points of the previous show, so if a class used these videos for several weeks in a row, for example, there's something to jog memories right at the start.
Will the VeggieTales set like these videos? I would say probably yes, although there is very little in common content-wise. To me, VeggieTales might actually work best with a little bit younger audience. The "lessons" in VeggieTales are generally pretty basic; the lessons in this series are cornerstones of Theology. These videos are probably less useful as entry/exit video for a Children's Church... I've seen VeggieTales and other vids used before and after service to keep kids entertained until parents arrive. These videos are more in-depth and build on themselves throughout each episode; kids would watch them in snatches before and after the service, but they are better watched as whole 30-minute "shows".
Would these videos be good for a Sunday-school or Children's Church class? Yes they would, but you would have to make sure that the rest of your class materials covered the same concepts and ideas as the video (I would love to see some curriculum developed to complement the videos, as a matter of fact [edit: since this was written, the curriculum I was hoping for has been announced!]). Who will learn something? You know, I'd say that almost anyone who happened to be paying attention will likely learn something. I had just completed reading and studying the books of Genesis and Exodus when I watched the videos, and even I picked up a tidbit or two here and there. So although the eight-year-old might be the one who gets excited when the theme song plays, the 15-year-old or the 35-year-old might just accidentally leave the room afterward with something to chew on too.
This is a great series. I'm pushing 40 and I had a terrific time watching it (several times!), and I'm sure you and your children will too. We can't wait for the next episode (topic: "Are the stories in the Bible fables?") If you've never been taught the Bible by a Sunday-school lady and then immediately been taught Church History by a pirate, it's a must-see. With nary a vegetable in sight, the puppets have taken over and are changing the way kids see the Bible!
We have a copy of each video to give away! To enter the contest, simply leave a comment on this blog post (use an actual identity or at least click "Name/URL" and put in your name, so I'll know who you are) and then immediately send an email to me at witb_contest@ScriptureMenu.com so I'll have your email address. Make sure your comment and email reach me before March 31, 2010. On March 31 I will randomly choose two entries, and each of those winners will receive one of our free DVD certificates, redeemable at Christian bookstores or direct from Tyndale. (I would wait until April 1 to choose winners, but then I'm afraid the winners wouldn't believe me!)
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