Book review: The Church History ABCs

The book? The Church History ABCs: Augustine and 25 Other Heroes of the Faith by Stephen J. Nichols and Ned Bustard

My thoughts? (part one) If you have kids and want them to have a primer in church history, get this. Like, now. Seriously.

The gist? This book is a colorful, kid-friendly ABCs of, you guessed it, church history. From Augustine to Zwingli, you'll find illustrations and a paragraph for each person. In the back, a more adult-slanted paragraph can be found, which also explains some of the more cryptic pictures. For example, Jonathan Edwards is eating a chocolate bar in his because he loved that particular treat, and he has a spider pictured with him as a call back to his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," in which he compared sinners to spiders dangling over hell by a thread. (Wow. That sounded creepy, as if you'll find that type of thing in these pages. No worries, this book doesn't delve into imagery like that!) The authors also provided a chronological timeline in the back, from Ignatius (who died in 110) to Florenece Young (died 1940).

My thoughts? (part two) As you'll see in the pictures below, I have a sweet girl who loves this book. I'm not sure how much she's getting from it yet, because some of the vocabulary is a little over her head (it's geared toward kids a little older than her, ages 4-8), but she loves the colors, loves to have Mommy read it to her, and loves asking questions about the words and pictures. Did I fall in love with it right away? Yes. Do I love it even more now because she loves it? YES.

Did I love it when she climbed into bed at 6:30am yesterday with the book, woke me up, and asked me to read her all of the stories? Notsomuch. But I do still love the book! (As does she, even in bad lighting...)

And did I mention that you should get this? 'Cause you should.

Edited to add: Oh my goodness, I just found the book's website. It has coloring pages and activities for some of the people featured. I'm psyched.

The FTC requires that I disclose that Crossway Books provided this book for me to review. Crossway, however, required nothing from me and didn't ask for a positive review or anything else. Therefore, I like Crossway more than the FTC, but I include this disclaimer because I also like not being fined by the FTC.