Do you know what a rebus is? It’s a puzzle that uses pictures to represent words in a well known saying or famous quotation. The old television game show Concentration was based on this idea. The Picture That! Bible Storybook uses a variation of this concept to help children ages 6 and under who know their ABCs and 1-2-3s to start participating in reading. This picture reader sprinkles over ninety full-color picture icons into more than 65 Bible stories, 26 from the Old Testament, from “The Start of the World” through “A Big Fish Swallows Jonah,” and 41 from the New, beginning with “Baby Jesus Is Born” and ending with “Jesus Will Come Back.” The back of the book includes a subject index and a section of questions and answers about “Who Is Jesus?”
The picture icons are listed on the inside front and back flaps, so when a parent reads the story aloud, the child can fill in the words represented by the icons. In fact, in all the stories, the words are actually written right under the icons. Whether this is a sound educational method of learning to read isn’t for me to say, but I do know that our boys had a lot of fun with it I guess the idea is that the icons will encourage kids to jump from picture to picture and then try to read some words in between. At the end of each story, there is a simple, one-line lesson which helps children remember what it teaches and see how to apply what they learn. The stories are well written and accurate yet brief - no more than 1-1/2 double-spaced pages in age appropriate descriptions. They are also in the same order as they're in the Bible, and the illustrations are very colorful. Tracy Harrast is the best-selling author of My Mommy and Me Story Bible and some forty other books. There is also a Picture That! 2 with even more Bible stories. ( )