A Book Review from Books At a Glance
by Kristin Stiles
I am a huge fan of The Radical Book for Kids, so when I saw the sequel was out, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it! I was not disappointed. Champ Thronton has produced a second volume that is just as diverse and fascinating as the first. He has filled this book with more facts about the Bible, hands-on activities, trivia, biographies, jokes, and advice on successful living. It’s informative, inspiring, convicting, encouraging, and fun.
Just looking over the table of contents gets the reader excited about the variety of topics that are included in this book. There is everything from exploring specific books of the Bible (Proverbs, Genesis, Romans, and Mark), to biographies of Christians who God used to build His kingdom (Hannah More, Lemuel Haynes, Eric Liddell, and Pandita Ramabai), to battles of the Bible, to practical advice on dealing with parents and evaluating our words, to making secret codes, a cube, a flying ring, and a 3-D drawing. This is the kind of book that will cultivate an inquisitive mind and draw a pre-teen back again and again.
I appreciate the tone that Thornton uses with this age demographic. He doesn’t speak down to them or come across as condescending at all. He addresses current topics in a way that is very relevant to what kids are facing in the world today. In various chapters, he outlines gospel truths clearly and anticipates the questions and arguments that kids would be apt to raise. He does a wonderful job of helping children understand how to read the Bible for themselves and how to understand it better. One section I particularly enjoyed was “Superhero Heresies.” Thornton used superheroes to represent historic heresies and then explained the error that underlies each one. For example, the heresy of Docetism is represented by Superman since it purports that Jesus was God but only seemed to be a human much like Superman was really a Kryptonian with all the superpowers that went along with that here on Earth, but happened to look like a human. What a clever way to teach these heresies which still show up today just in different terminology.
This book would be excellent for children between the ages of 8-14 as a gift or as part of a homeschool/devotional study. It could benefit the receiver far more than we could know on this side of eternity.
Kristin Stiles is a home-school mom, a Sunday School teacher, and helps lead the “Young, Reading, & Reformed” children’s ministry at Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia, PA
Buy the books
THE REALLY RADICAL BOOK FOR KIDS: MORE TRUTH, MORE FUN, by Champ Thornton