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This book is a manual for helping to explain the weekly Gospel readings to children. The format of the book is very clear and helpful. It begins with a color-coded chart showing the outline of the whole church year. The chart is organized chronologically and it gives the date, the name of each week (e.g. 1st Sunday of Advent), and the page number where that reading can be found. The color-coding indicates into which season the week falls. Unfortunately there is no key to indicate what the colors mean, so while it can be deduced that purple corresponds to the seasons of Lent and Advent, and green to the season of Ordinary Time, there are colors whose meaning is unclear. However that ambiguity does not take away from the chart’s ability to serve as a table of contents. The format of the chapters is very clear and accessible. Each weekly reading is given at least two facing pages. In the season of Easter where the readings are longer this is expanded to as many as six pages. Each reading is given an illustration on the left hand page which shows an image from the reading. The illustrations are done in a very pleasing, stylized way reminiscent of Ancient Egyptian wall paintings. Across the bottom of each illustration is a one-sentence summary of the reading that captures the heart of the Gospel for that week. On the right hand page is the Gospel reading and the children’s translation. It is quite helpful to have the actual Gospel reading present because the children’s translation is actually a paraphrase of the biblical text. In this book the interpretive nature of paraphrasing leads to several problems. In some instances the nuances of the original language are lost which could lead to an inaccurate understanding of the text. In some instances very severe passages are softened almost to the point of meaninglessness. At other times the author of the manual inserts opinions and interpretations that simply do not follow from the text. In general this paraphrase of the Gospels, while not necessarily wrong, is simply not rigorous and leaves ample room for misinterpretation. While this book has a beautiful layout and is very accessible and inviting, it leaves much to be desired in the realms of rigor and orthodoxy. Publisher: Prayer Press |
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