Book Review: The Jesus Storybook Bible (Lloyd-Jones)

The Jesus Storybook Bible
By: Sally Lloyd-Jones


5 February, 2007
Review By: Kathy Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, New York


In the interests of full disclosure, let me reveal that I had the privilege of reading the manuscript of this book several years ago as a theological consultant to Zondervan, the publisher. I did not know, however, of the fulsome thanks to my husband Tim in the acknowledgments until I received my review copy a few days ago.


Sally Lloyd-Jones, a Redeemer member for many years, has done a wondrous thing. She has captured the plot line of redemption in a children's story Bible that sings the praise of Jesus and his saving grace on every page, in every story. Most children's books of Bible stories are little more than a Christianized version of Aesop's fables, or at best, a Christian adventure cartoon.  But Sally goes out of her way in the first pages of the book to reclaim the true story of the Bible: not a book or rules, nor a book of heroes, but:

“The Bible is most of all a Story…It's like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this Story is--it's true! There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.”

This is heady theology, often missed in adult preaching and teaching, but fully realized in an age appropriate and attractive form that will delight children and often (at least for me) leave the grown up reader in tears.


More wondrously, she has avoided the moralism and legalism that so often characterizes Christian educational materials for children. For five years I worked as an editor of children's curriculum, requiring me to review, edit, and sometimes write Sunday school material for children. It is very hard to find (or even produce) material for children that doesn't essentially contain the message “Be good, so that God, your heavenly Father, will love you, and your earthly parents will be happy with you, too.”


To discover The Jesus Storybook Bible is to have a unique resource for communicating the gospel to children in all it's fullness. I hope that every family, and even people without young children, would get a copy of this book just to remind them of what the Real Story of the Bible is all about.