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God’s Very Good Idea: A True Story About God’s Delightfully Different Family
Main Story and Illustrations
Trillia Newbell has written a book teaching children about diversity and God’s good plan. Because we humans are God’s imagers, we are all the same. Yet we are different. People come in different sizes, shapes, and colors. God created men and women who have curly/straight blonde/red/brown/black hair, and they have dark or light skin and all kinds of variations in between. We all have different interests and hobbies. God’s idea was to make a lot of people who would love each other (and God), and they would reflect him to each other.
Catalina Echeverri, who has illustrated all the books in the series, gives us a picture of all sorts of people hanging out in a park eating ice cream, playing soccer, flying a kite with kids, feeding a squirrel, riding bikes, trimming the hedges, etc. All people are made in God’s image, and so all are valuable. Yet when you turn the page all goes dark. The same wonderful picnic looks like it is under a tornado warning. Because of sin, things are not well. A man yells at his dog. Two girls laugh at another girl for not being able to jumprope properly. Two men fight in front of a daughter over a broken kite. Another girl is heartbroken while the boy she likes texts another girl. People fight, argue, and steal. All need forgiveness.
Newbell lays out the gospel, and how Jesus came and loved and healed people. Yet they killed him, but he rose from the dead. He gives us his Spirit so that we can live like him and love others. The book ends with all kinds of people feasting together in joy.
The book is great. Its ending is reminiscent of Revelation 7:9-10 when John sees the multitude of tribes, tongues, and nations worshiping together. Here, this multitude is eating a feast at church, a picture of the final marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:7). My favorite parts are the pages with the multitude of people playing together. It’s a small picture of what we’ll be doing in the new creation. Worshiping God by reflecting him through loving and serving each other- people who all shapes and sizes and colors. The only negative is the binding. It isn’t as tight as the other books in the series. On a few of the pages I can see the colors of a previous page.
Highly recommended.
Lagniappe
- Series: Tales That Tell the Truth
- Author: Trillia Newbell
- Illustrator: Catalina Echeverri
- Age Range: 5-9 years
- Hardcover: 32 pages
- Publisher: The Good Book Company (September 1, 2017)
- Take a Look Inside
- Other reviews in this series:
- The Friend Who Forgives
- The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross
- Goodbye to Goodbyes
- The One O’Clock Miracle
- The Storm That Stopped
Find it on Amazon and the Good Book Company!
Disclosure: I received this book free from The Good Book Company. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.
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