I’ve recently had the opportunity to review the God Gave Us So Much limited edition 3-book Treasury by Lisa Tawn Bergren. (**I received a free copy of this book to review.**)
We were already familiar with Little Cub, the polar bear, from the stories God Gave Us You and God Gave Us Two-which we love. This Treasury includes 3 new stories with Little Cub and her family; God Gave Us the World, God Gave Us Love, and God Gave us Heaven. As the titles imply, these are solidly Christian-based children’s stories addressing biblical questions about creation, family relationships, and heaven with beautiful and engaging art work by Laura Bryant. These stories are an amazing collection for any Christian home, offering a simple example for parents (like me) that struggle with how to relate complex biblical themes age-appropirately to young children. The illustrations were engaging to our 3 and 4 year olds and the messages were thought-provoking for our 6 year old.
The Ladybug remembers enough with the pictures as prompts to keep telling them the story again and again as if she’s reading it to them.God Gave Us the World uses a bear family trip to a local museum to help Little Cub explore the diversity of creation and the almighty power of God as the Creator. As Mama Bear explains to Little Cub’s endless questioning, “God created our world and everything in it, because it’s in his natural to create. Understanding that is part of why he put us here…to serve and worship him, our amazing God, who gave us this amazing world.” At nearly 30 pages, the prose was a little long too long to hold the boys’ interest all the way through; however, they were in love with the pictures, which gave me plenty of time to read it to the Ladybug. Near the end there was a valuable tie in to environmental stewardship too, as Mama Bear explained that “We have to take care of our world. It’s God’s gift to us. He’d be sad if we hurt it.”
The Cowboy liked to just sit and look at the pictures over and over. God Gave Us Love is a beautiful conversation between Little Cub and her Grampa about showing God’s love to others, even when we don’t feel like it. Using simple examples from their own little family, Grampa explains that “while we want to love others as God loves us, we don’t always feel like loving them. But when we choose to, it’s always the right thing.” This story did an amazing job of breaking deep and complex themes into relatable situations which completely engaged both the Ladybug and the Cowboy.
And this book doesn’t back down from the tough questions, either. Grampa dives right in on “How do we know God loves us?” and “Could we ever do something to make God not love us?” This story alone would convince me to include the 3-book Treasury in our family library.
The illustrations are so beautiful. The final book in God Gave Us So Much Treasury is God Gave Us Heaven. I considered this one of the most biblically sound views of heaven I’ve seen for young children. Little Cub is spending some special one-on-one time with her Papa when she asks the seemingly simple question “what’s heav’n?” Papa Bear doesn’t shrug her question off, or paint some silly pictures of eating ice cream and playing games all day. Using a children’s interpretation of scripture from the New International Version (NIV) Bible, he explains that heaven is all about basking in the glory of God and that it’s so much better than anything we have now and anything we could possibly imagine. And the author leaves no doubt to readers that Jesus is the only way to get there.
He's a bit of a bookworm...wonder where he got that from? This would make a great addition to your family library or a great gift for new or expecting parents. And, thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group, and Blogging for Books, I’m so excited to have one copy to offer as a GIVEAWAY to my readers!
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Entries will close Friday, January 14, 2011 at Midnight. Winner will be chosen via random.org and announced on Monday, January 17, 2011. Good Luck!
