Best Children’s Bibles

• Your children will expect that reading the Bible is a part of their day. This is setting the stage for them to independently read God’s Word by themselves as they mature. A study by Notre Dame professor Christian Smith shows that children who learn this discipline from early on are more likely to continue in their faith through the teen years and on.
• Kids gain a longer attention span to sit and read. This is preparing your child to focus long enough to actually sit down and read the Bible later in life. So many of us, including me, struggle to sit still long enough to study and reflect on God’s Word. It’s important that we help our children learn to listen to, age-appropriately discuss, and pray over what they read in the Bible from their earliest years. This requires practice and consistency.
• Children will gain an understanding of the main storyline of the Bible and the Gospel that will help shape their worldview from early on. You’ve probably heard it said that children learn more in their first five years of life than any other time. This is prime time for shaping their view of God and the Gospel. And, guess what? If you don’t shape their worldview, someone else will whether you want that or not. PBS will. Disney will. The school system will. Start reading the Bible early and you will give your kids a grid to see life through that makes the most sense. You will help them see their sin, their need for a Savior, and the hope that is found only in the Gospel.
• Reading and believing God’s Word produces good fruit in our lives over time, by the grace of God. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness….” In Psalm 19 we see that it refreshes the soul, makes wise the simple, gives joy to the heart, and gives light to the eyes. These are just a few of the promises about the work of God’s Word in believers’–including even young children’s–lives.
• The Bible promises blessings for the family that faithfully instructs their children. I trust that the Lord’s command in Deuteronomy 6 to all Christian parents is there for a reason. If we, as parents, are faithful to read God’s Word to and talk about it with our kids, as well as strive to live it out (imperfectly and only by God’s grace, I might add), there will be blessings for the family. It opens the door for God to do a great work in our kids’ lives as they grow up.

• God-centered, not man-centered. Do the stories focus on who God is and what he has done? Or do they simply focus on the heroic traits of people? A good children’s Bible makes it clear that God is the center of the story, not humans.
• Grace-centered, not moralistic. Do the stories focus on our need for a Savior and God’s grace in sending His Son to rescue us? Or do they focus only on what we should do? The point of every story and book in the Bible is to ultimately show us God’s plan of redemption for sinners in need of a Savior. A children’s Bible should never leave a child thinking that the main point is to behave. That’s simply not Christianity! We can never earn God’s favor or our salvation through good deeds. It’s actually the other way around–good works are born out of a heart that has been changed by God.
• Written well. Do the stories keep their target age of child engaged? Do your kids say key phrases out loud with you? Do you as a parent enjoy reading it? Those are often the signs of a well-written story Bible. Some of the great ones listed below have a way of drawing children into them through the culturally relevant retelling, clever humor, or use of literary features like rhyme or onomatopoeia.
• Good illustrations. Do the illustrations accurately and age-appropriately reflect what is going on in the story? Is there excellence in the drawings? Some story Bibles do a better job of this than others, but you’ll notice that ones like The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Action Bible draw children into what is going on in the story and creatively illustrate some important truths.

Review of the Best Children’s Bibles for Every Age

Below are some of our other favorite children’s Bible story books that we go back to again and again.

I find it’s helpful to have several different kinds of these Bible story books to read from, since each one has a slightly different emphasis or way of telling the story. Owning several provides variety for the kids and a fresh way to hear different Bible stories.

Read Aloud Bible Stories

For Ages: Infants – 3

We love this classic children’s story Bible for three reasons.

1. God is the hero not the people. At the end of each narrative is a helpful page titled “What did you learn?” It states a few brief God-centered points in order to promote discussion with your child.
2. Lindvall has the gift of reducing complicated Bible concepts down to simple ones while remaining faithful to the original text.
3. The illustrations by H. Kent Puckett have always captured the attention of my young kids as we read together before bed. With large pages full of colorful and simple images, the kids’ eyes are glued to what is happening in the story.

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