Book Review: God Gave Us Heaven
God Gave Us Heaven
by Lisa Tawn Bergen
illustrated by Laura J. Bryant
Summary: Little Cub awakens one morning with some important questions on her mind: What is heaven like? How do we get there? Will we eat in heaven? Will we be angels?
During a delightful day spent wandering their arctic world, Papa gently answers each question, assuring Little Cub that heaven is a wonderful place, “a million times better” than she can imagine. He explains how God has made a way for those who love him to enter their heavenly home forever after their lives on earth are over.
Reuniting the best-selling author-illustrator team from God Gave Us You, this gentle story provides satisfying answers for a young child’s most difficult questions about heaven. Parents, grandparents, childcare professionals, librarians, Sunday school teachers, and others will appreciate the gentle approach to a topic that’s on the minds of so many “little cubs.”
Through captivating, full-color illustrations and tender, biblically sound storytelling, young readers and those who love them will find reasons to rejoice in knowing that God Gave Us Heaven.
Review:
This is the last of the three children’s books I was given to review this time through, and while it is a good book, it wasn’t my favorite. It’s well-written and beautifully illustrated (except the penguins. There are no penguins at the North Pole, nor polar bears at the South. But that’s just a pet peeve of mine.). It manages to cover a very heavy topic in a way easily understandable to older younger kids (you know, 5-7 rather than 3-5).
But… (there’s always a but), it comes across as ‘preachy.’ Little Cub is just a bit too precocious in her questions, and Papa has the answers down just a bit too pat. Maybe it doesn’t come across that way to youngsters–my daughter was only interested in looking at the pictures, not listening to the story, so I don’t know what she really thought of it–but it came across that way to me.
So, a good book, but my copy will probably go to the church library instead of staying on my home bookshelf.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:53 pm
[...] Original post by nessili [...]
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:47 am
The dedication for this book is to a child that died at the age of six, bringing a wistful pause before the book begins. This is a special story dedicated to the hope Christians have in an assurance of a future in Heaven. The story states that while physical death is unavoidable in a fallen world, God offers Christians the Hope of a bridge to Him through Jesus.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
PDF–
I understand that, and you understand that, but my three-year old daughter doesn’t. Not yet. I wasn’t saying that the book wasn’t correct in the hope it offered, nor in the Truth it was sharing, just that the manner in which it came across (to me anyway) was…for lack of a better term, trite. It was still a good book–which I think I stated. Just not one that I would read night after night. Unlike the other two.