Bible Treasury for LDS Children By Sherrie Johnson Illustrated by Jerry Harston, Leslie Harston Deseret Book, 1999. Hardcover: 130 pages. ISBN: 1-57345-162-2 Suggested retail price: $19.95 (US)
Reviewed by: Melissa Proffitt

A collection of Bible stories for LDS children doesn't differ all that much from one for mainstream Christians. Abraham still chooses to sacrifice Isaac (and is still stopped by an angel); Moses still receives the Ten Commandments; Christ's birth still happens in Bethlehem. The primary difference, at least in this collection, is in the source material. In Bible Treasury for LDS Children, Sherrie Johnson draws not only on the stories from the Bible, but on the additional understanding we have from the Book of Mormon and the writings of latter-day prophets. The combination makes this story collection very much an LDS book.

Bible Treasury is written in simplified form for children. The stories are still fairly long, so I would estimate the age of the typical reader to be 8-11 years old; don't expect your 3-year-old to sit still for this one. Since this is an LDS-oriented collection, the first story in Bible Treasury for LDS Children is not that of the earth's creation but of the council in heaven. All the stories reflect LDS theology in this way, and I admit I liked it. We have a number of mainstream Christian storybooks in our home, and while most of them are excellent (particularly the one about Jonah) there are a few which I have to quickly change to reflect our Mormon beliefs. Naturally, this book doesn't have this problem. One of the best examples of this approach is the story "The Tower of Babel," which, instead of ending with the confusion of languages, includes the story of the Jaredites and the polysyllabic name Mahonri Moriancumer.

I'm already a fan of Jerry Harston's illustrations; as I said in my review of My First Book of Mormon Stories, these watercolor-and-pen illustrations are reminiscent of Minerva Teichert and are colorful and lively as well as intriguing to my children's eyes. Sherrie Johnson does a fine job of selecting interesting stories and condensing and simplifying them for young readers. The one problem I have with the prose is that it sometimes varies in tone and style. An example from the story "Adam and Eve":

&nbps;    Eve began to want the fruit. It was pretty. It would taste good. But most of all, it would make her wise.

Compare this very basic prose to the speech by the serpent, which comes just before:

&nbps;    'You shall not surely die!' the serpent lied. 'If you eat that fruit, your eyes shall be opened. You shall be like gods, knowing good and evil.'

This line is a recognizable version of the actual scripture in the Bible. In fact, this elevation of tone occurs in every place where Johnson lifts dialogue directly from the Bible. In other stories where Johnson has made up her own dialogue (usually to enliven a scene which in the Bible is narrated without dialogue) the words spoken by the characters are in the same simple style as the first quoted example above. This made the prose slightly uneven, but I think most young readers will not be disturbed by it. I mention it because in my reading, I gradually came to wish that all the dialogue had been written in a similar style, which I think would have made this a very elegant book.

Bible Treasury also looks and feels nice. It's an oversized hardcover that is ideal for gathering your children around to read to them. There is also a glossary at the back of the book to help young readers understand some of the more complicated words. I have a technical quibble with the format: the titles at the head of each story are in a font which is, granted, a lot larger than that of the other page headers, but only slightly larger and darker than the the text of the stories themselves. This made it hard to find the beginnings of stories just by flipping through the pages (something I was doing a lot of to write this review).

What fascinated me, in reading this book, was my realization of how many Bible stories we tell our children come from the Old Testament. Having studied both the Old and New Testament, I knew that the two were very different and I even knew why; it was still a surprise to see that of the 65 stories, 42 of them are from the Old Testament. And though we may emphasize doctrine when we are adults, studying the Pauline Epistles and the teachings of Jesus, it is the stories that we first hear in youth -- Cain and Abel, Moses being pulled from the river, David slaying Goliath, Joseph and the coat of many colors. Bible Treasury for LDS Children is a good introduction to these stories, as well as a good way to read them again.

Melissa Proffitt