Kingdom Files: A Who’s Who from the Bible

While the best way to teach scripture stories is straight from the source, sometimes it can be helpful to have those stories laid out in a narrative, especially for young children.  We recently reviewed two books from Barbour Publishing’s  series, Kingdom Files. These books are biographies of individuals from the Bible written in the format of a detective’s case file allowing each reader to “investigate” the individual being presented. 

The two titles we received were Who Was Mary, Mother of Jesus? and Who Was Jonah?  The books are broken up into three parts.  The first is the Fact File, which is a two-page spread at the beginning  that gives basic background information such as name, what they did, key stats, and a mini-timeline.  This helps to “set the stage,” so to speak.

Next is the Action File.  The Action File is the narrative of the Biblical account.  It tells the story in an easy to understand manner.  For Mary, this includes the visit from the angel Gabriel, her time with Elizabeth, Christ’s birth, their journey into Egypt, losing Jesus at the temple, the wedding in Cana, and the few times she is mentioned around Christ’s crucifixion.  For Jonah, it begins with his being called to preach in Nineveh, his running away, time aboard the ship, being swallowed by the fish, his preaching to the people and king of Nineveh, his anger afterward, and the lesson with the plant. 

Clues boxes appear throughout the stories.  These boxes offer some insights to help better understand the story or to point out specific principles.  For example, there is a clues box located in the section on Jesus being left at the temple that discuss how Mary and Joseph didn’t worry about Him traveling apart from them because they trusted Him and how you should learn to respect your parents and teachers and show others through your actions that you care more about doing God’s will than your own.

The Action File also contains black and white illustrations throughout.

The last section to be included is the Power File.  This file contains ten “Power-Up’s.”  The Power-Up were lessons or characteristics learned about God through the life of that person in the scriptures.  For example, God blesses you or God is faithful.  Each Power-Up also contains a memory verse that corresponds to the attribute being taught. 

I thought setting up Bible stories as a case file was a creative way to teach children about different characters throughout the Bible.  I liked that scriptures were used where applicable to tell the story.  I appreciated the parts where they gave some background information, such as in Jonah, to help explain why he was so against going to Nineveh, but that they didn’t take liberties to embellish the stories themselves by adding non-scriptural content.
 

My 8 year old son read about Jonah and my 10 year old daughter read about Mary.  They were able to read through the books fairly quickly on their own.  They both liked them and learned something new about the person whose “file” they were reading.  And I think it helped them to have a better understanding of those scripture stories.