Tracy Harrast

Do you know what a rebus is? It’s a puzzle that uses pictures to represent words in a well known saying or famous quotation. The old television game show Concentration was based on this idea. The Picture That! Bible Storybook uses a variation of this concept to help children ages 6 and under who know their ABCs and 1-2-3s to start participating in reading. This picture reader sprinkles over ninety full-color picture icons into more than 65 Bible stories, 26 from the Old Testament, from “The Start of the World” through “A Big Fish Swallows Jonah,” and 41 from the New, beginning with “Baby Jesus Is Born” and ending with “Jesus Will Come Back.” The back of the book includes a subject index and a section of questions and answers about “Who Is Jesus?”
The picture icons are listed on the inside front and back flaps, so when a parent reads the story aloud, the child can fill in the words represented by the icons. In fact, in all the stories, the words are actually written right under the icons. Whether this is a sound educational method of learning to read isn’t for me to say, but I do know that our boys had a lot of fun with it I guess the idea is that the icons will encourage kids to jump from picture to picture and then try to read some words in between. At the end of each story, there is a simple, one-line lesson which helps children remember what it teaches and see how to apply what they learn. The stories are well written and accurate yet brief - no more than 1-1/2 double-spaced pages in age appropriate descriptions. They are also in the same order as they're in the Bible, and the illustrations are very colorful. Tracy Harrast is the best-selling author of My Mommy and Me Story Bible and some forty other books. There is also a Picture That! 2 with even more Bible stories.… (more)

The gospels are some of the most captivating pieces of literature ever written. The depictions of Jesus’ life have captured the imagination for nearly 2,000 years and continue to do so. Our family recently jumped ahead in our Bible readings from Leviticus to Luke, and the response in our young children was amazing. Reading about the deeply personal life of our Lord while He walked the earth is a true joy.

The sense of awe and joy Jesus’ live evokes is succinctly captured for young children in The Miracles of Jesus by Tracy Harrast. Five of Jesus’ acts are brightly illustrated on two-page spreads and described in simple, succinct prose – approximately two paragraphs of text for each story. In addition to the relation of the event, a spiritual application statement is also included.

“Wine for a Wedding” relates Jesus’ first miracle – the transformation of water to wine at a wedding in Cana. The application statement that helps young readers draw spiritual connections between events related in the Bible is, “Jesus even helps with little problems.” The ability to transform scriptural events into personally applicable principles is immensely valuable in the lives of Christians young and old; I’m delighted to see picture books that model this skill for children.

The other four miracles related span both the well and lesser known: “The Wind and the Waves Obey”, “A Picnic for Thousands”, “Jesus Walks on the Water”, and “Money from a Fish”. For each story all of the applicable verse references are given whether the event is described in a single gospel or all four, an excellent feature that few Christian children’s titles include. With two pages for each story, the resulting ten pages seem rather brief for a picture book, thankfully there is an additional feature which compensates for this brevity.

Each of Estelle Corke’s illustrations are filled with light and jewel-toned colours (excepting “Jesus Walks on Water”, a night scene). The uniformly cheerful spreads are each accompanied by a turning wheel that reveals an aspect of the miracle’s scene while adding lively motion to each story. When your child turns the wheel the water turns to wine before her eyes, the waves roll, fish and bread appear in baskets, and a coin appears in the mouth of a large fish. Young readers between the recommended ages of three and five years will be captivated. My middle-daughter was captivated as a two-year-old, and my six-year-old is still interested. Thankfully the board-book format has proved to be reliably durable during its rigorous, in-home testing process regardless of the child’s age.

Parents seeking a simple, light-hearted way to introduce a small selection of Jesus’ miracles to little ones will be delighted to see their children returning to this title again and again. The captivating combination of vibrant paintings and do-it-yourself motion pictures proves to be a nearly addictive blend for pre-schoolers while the handy scripture references allow parents to go deeper with their children once their interest is sparked. Here you go kids, have at it!

Reviewed at quiverfullfamily.com… (more)