As parents, we want to do all the right things for our kids. We want to teach them all the right things. When it comes to faith, we especially want to teach them the right things. So when I saw one of the book options I could choose from Mulnomah Publishing's Blogging for Books program was a children's book called God Gave Us Love by Lisa Tawn Bergren, I chose it. We have many children's books on our shelves, but sadly, not many Christian books.
Bergren's book, illustrated by Laura J. Bryant, is a board book that is good for little hands to hold. It is colorful and fun to look at, with very cute characters.
The book begins with Little Cub getting upset with the otters for scaring away all the fish that Little Cub and Grampa are trying to catch. Grampa uses this as a lesson to teach Little Cub the following things:
- being together is more important than catching fish
- God wants us to love everyone
- sometimes we love people even when we don't like them
- love brings out the best in us
- we don't always feel like loving others but we can still choose to do it
- we can never do anything to make God not love us
- God showed us his love through his son
Overall, I thought the lessons about love were ones that a child could understand. I did think, however, that the book tried to cover too much in too short a format; and while it mentions God's son, it doesn't actually use the name Jesus, which I found strange.
There were also a couple of writing inconsistencies. In one section, Little Cub and Grampa are alone talking and then they are having a group hug with the rest of the family. If one is not paying attention to the illustrations, there is nothing in the text to make that jump to being back with the family. Another oddity was that at the end of the book Little Cub is shown to be a girl. While the gender of the character is unimportant in the big scheme of things, it seems it should have been more clear from the outset if it was going to be a part at the end.
I would give this book 3 stars out of 5.
Oh, and when I asked my 4 1/2 year old if he liked the book, he said yes. What did he like? The polar bears.
If you liked this review, you can rank it for me here: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/bloggingforbooks/reviews/view/17688
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