Member Reviews
This book is so much more than just jokes. It is a fun book of Bible trivia that really stretched me and also some great facts! The kids loved the jokes and since they are Bible jokes for kids they are great for all ages and very appropriate. The book also has some great section where you fill in the blanks on verses. The kids were doing great but I found them to be challenging! Great way to strengthen your scripture memory in a really fun way!!
My oldest especially enjoyed the trivia section title: Are You Smarter than King Solomon? There were questions in a wide variety of age and skill levels. Also a lot of fun was a short section on Old Testament Word Scramble. This is just a great way to keep your mind sharp and keep you focused on God's word.
This little book will keep the kids busy for quite some time. They will be having fun, gaining Bible knowledge and entertaining themselves! This has been a great addition to our library and I can see us using it for quite some time!
My kids have enjoyed reading through this book and sharing with others.
I realised just how little I knew of the Bible, particularly of the Old Testament, when I encountered the questions in this book. Of course, different versions of the Bible worded things differently but that was no excuse for my ignorance. So I set about reading this book with gusto.
There are a number of formats in this book that can be used to enliven Bible learning classes. Multiple Choice questions, Fill-in-the-Blanks, Match the columns, you take your pick.
The Did you know? Section includes fact learning related to the Bible. For instance, the size and scale of Noah’s Ark, the height of Goliath, the sizes of the chapters and verses in the Bible etc. The history is explained with humour. There is also a lot of interesting trivia on the longest and shortest chapters in the Bible, and the length of the verses.
The book begins with Knock, Knock jokes. Most of them are names from the Old Testament, with Matthew, Luke and Jesus, the only exceptions from the New Testament. The funniest one for me was “It’s me, Adam! There’s only one other person on the earth. Who do you think it is?
We also have Multiple Choice Questions from the Psalms, the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The answers follow each question, and that was a relief. On a Kindle, going back and forth between pages is rather tedious.
Are You Smarter Than King Soloman? asks interesting questions, through the medium of Multiple Choice questions. there is a breath of good humour which suffuses the book, suggesting that Bible reading should be a joy, not a chore.
We also have Anagrams from the Old Testament. I enjoyed making words out of the Old Testament names.
Who Art Thou? presents us with questions, each with a series of clues. Each time we click a clue, the number of points we can earn from answering that question goes down.
We also get the details of phrases like “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” that are popularly used in the English language today, but that originated in the Bible.
And then we have the lists, especially the one list that I struggled with all through Sunday School. The listing of the ten plagues that struck Egypt, in the right order. We are also quizzed on the order of the Ten Commandments and the names of Jesus’ ancestors in the order of their birth.
Bible Banter contains some funny one-liners.
Another section calls us to match the names of husbands with wives, fathers and sons, and brothers too. Another quizzes us on the old and new names of well known Biblical characters. We are also asked to match people with the dreams they saw.
The sheer number and variety of questions is astounding. This book could serve as a fantastic way of getting youngsters and older people interested in reading the Bible.
A great fun book for kids . It is the best book to teach bible to kids.......
a great resource for sunday school teachers and parents that want to help their children learn in a fun way facts from the Bible. I love the creative questions, it gets children involved and searching the Bible for answers. i wish there were more books like this!
A great tool for parents to encourage their children into the word. With fill in the missing word and other fun activities, you and your children will be engaged in the word. Some of the facts were new to me as well so I think there is something for everyone. I like that you can do this with your child to create conversations about God's redemption. It also talks about some of the hard stuff which I think is always good too. It only helps to think it thru. The end came with a call for a relationship with Christ.
There are some concerns I had one being with the jokes. I do believe that the Lord has a sense of humor and the humor is not at His expense but we have to be careful about our reverence for Christ and I was pleased to see that later in the book the importance of reverence. The other concern was the question are you going to heaven? Sometimes questions like that do not deal with the heart but a list of what needs to be done. It has nothing to do with faith and our need for Christ. For the facts alone, it is a great encouragement for anyone to know more about the bible and the desire to know more. This book may do that.
A Special Thank You to Bethany House Publishers and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review
[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Bethany House Publishers. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]
As someone who is familiar with the writings of the author [1] and someone who has read perhaps too many books for children without having any of them [2], this book comes with a clear intentionality about it. A question worth asking with any book is: why does this book exist? What is its purpose or motive for being? In this case, we have a book with two obvious purposes for being, both of which may be obvious to some of the more clever children who are the audience of this book. The open motive for this book is to provide trivia, jokes, and fun facts for children. The slightly less open but not particularly hidden agenda for this book is to evangelize children in the religious mindset of the author, which has some flaws in it. There are some things this book gets wrong, and the book itself may not be approved by all parents, particularly those who disagree with the author's intent to tell children lies about salvation, and even make some missteps concerning some of what is presented as biblical fact. For the most part, this is an enjoyable book despite its occasional flaws, but there were some aspects about it that rubbed me the wrong way that are also worthy of comment.
The book itself is a short one. I read the ePub version of the book on my computer and managed somehow to fall asleep while I was reading it despite its brevity. The paper version of the book is intended to be under 200 pages and it should be short enough to be of interest to parents and children. It will likely not be of interest to parents on its own terms. There are plenty of children's books that are of interest to parents, that contain a deeper layer of material that adults can appreciate or at least enough interesting details that an adult can infer a deeper layer that may not exist. This is not one of those books. IT begins with several pages of knock knock jokes and does not rise far above this level. Perhaps the most interesting material this book has is its Bible facts and trivia, its fill in the blanks, and especially the questions it asks readers to ponder over about their knowledge and beliefs concerning the scriptures. To be sure, this material comes with some fairly overt hidden agendas, but all the same, that is the real depth this book has and the sort of material that would be most of value, especially as the questions are graciously left open-ended, for the most part.
Parents who share the precise religious worldview of this book will likely find this book to be a suitable way to engage or distract children during road trips, and some of the questions in the book are likely to be of interest in sparking longer and more serious conversations about what is in the Bible and what is thought and believed about the Bible. There is obviously plenty to appreciate about this book. That said, some of the jokes in this book were tiresome to read one time, and would be incredibly irritating if repeated over and over again by a child who actually thought they were funny or who liked to intentionally bother others with jokes known not to be funny. Ultimately, this is a book written to children that panders to them, that flatters them where they are with the same sort of material provided by Hollywood culture. This ought not to come as a surprise since that is precisely the background of the author, but it is disappointing when there are a lot of books written to children that see the potential of children to be serious and reflective human beings that this book comes with the goal of making Christianity acceptable to young readers by flattery and dumbing things down. This book is, unfortunately, a bit of a let down for the most part.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/11/24/book-review-the-100-most-encouraging-verses-in-the-bible/
[2] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014/06/21/book-review-how-to-teach-your-children-shakespeare/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2013/08/13/book-review-teach-your-children-gods-message/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017/01/12/audiobook-review-with-lee-in-virginia/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/30/book-review-tropical-family-vacations/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/05/book-review-beautiful-oops/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/11/27/book-review-the-reading-strategies-book/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/11/23/book-review-the-illustrated-bible/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/10/31/book-review-the-carnelian-legacy/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/10/20/book-review-willie-out-west/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/10/20/book-review-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-pair-of-trousers-and-other-stories/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/06/20/book-review-the-united-states-of-lego/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/05/25/book-review-the-baseball-crows/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/04/30/book-review-unusual-chickens-for-the-exceptional-poultry-farmer/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/04/12/book-review-elinda-who-danced-in-the-sky-an-estonian-folktale/