Egermeier's Bible Story Book

Ergermeier's Bible Story Book has been around for generations! First published in 1922, it has continued to be updated and published ever since. We have an older edition from the 1970s, but our kids still enjoy it.

This story Bible is a nice followup to Kenneth Taylor's Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. If you enjoyed Taylor's story Bible with your toddlers and preschoolers, reach for this when your children hit elementary school. The stories are between 2 paragraphs and 2 pages in length: a fact which I very much appreciate. Rather than editing stories to fit in a certain framework, Ergemeier breaks the stories up logically, letting longer events take up more space. And she covers the entire Bible, not skipping over gruesome stories or even the book of Revelation. This story Bible will take you a long time to get through, but it is worth it. There are discussion questions after each story which are wonderful. Sometimes, we have to rephrase them, and our 4 and a half year olds don't always follow them. Our 6 year old, on the other hand, is picking up every word and can nearly always answer each question.

Stories are covered chronologically with Scripture references given. To give you an example, the New Testament starts with the announcement of the birth of John. Between the announcement of John's birth and his actual birth/naming, the story of the angel's visits to Mary and Joseph and Mary's visit to Elizabeth are recounted. (For some reason, this story Bible leaves out Anna and Simeon in the temple with the baby Jesus--it includes so many other smaller stories that I'm puzzled about this oversight.)

I highly recommend this Bible story book; I must point out, though, that it does contain pictures of Jesus. Occasionally, there are liberties taken with the stories--additions made in order to make the stories more understandable to young children (comments about someone being happy or similar ideas). We haven't found any that are overly troubling to us, but it's worth pointing out. We also tend to add to the questions or reword on occasion; still they are wonderful starting points, and we so much appreciate that this story Bible doesn't cutesy up the Bible with trite sayings or pithy quotations. And, because Scripture references are included, it is easy to read the actual Bible along with it.