I received my favorite type of mail – book mail!
My poor mailman. He’s got to be in great shape from hauling boxes and packages of books to my door.
This month we’ve been reading the graphic novel Covenant Kids: The Law by Andrew Youngblood.
My older kids enjoy reading graphic novels, so I hoped they would enjoy this book that meshes a story about teenagers with God’s plan for Creation.
In the book, which will be the first in a series, a group of teens is hungry to learn more about Scripture. However, in their day and time it is not legal to meet together to discuss the Bible or Christianity.
They meet together in secret with a mentor to learn about God’s plan for history through creation, while trying to avoid being discovered.
My kids enjoyed the colorful pictures and the graphic novel format.
I was so glad to see Biblically-based graphic novels to pique my pre-teens’ interest in reading. They can enjoy reading while learning truth from Scripture. That’s a huge win!
The story line about teens who cannot legally meet together to study Scripture was impactful and caused my children to pause and think what this would be like if they lived in a similar time. It led to great discussions about the freedoms we currently enjoy in our country.
I really like the concept of the book; however, my kids and I both found the story line a little challenging to follow. We wanted a bit more backstory on the time period and why Bible study groups were illegal.
Also, the story line about the teens was a little confusing at times, and it was difficult to keep some of the characters straight. We weren’t always sure why certain things happened to characters or who some of the minor characters were.
The book is written in a format that jumps between the Bible study portion with the teens’ mentor and the plot of trying to avoid detection from neighbors and government agents. While this jumping between the two parts of the story can be exciting, in this book the jumps were not always seamless. Sometimes the story felt a little choppy and the changes between the two plots was a bit abrupt.
My kids felt there were not enough details about the teens in the story and they were not always able to follow the plot of the story due to the abrupt changes between Bible truths and the secret meetings.
I felt like the Biblical portion of the story was well-done and simply explained. We were just left with several unanswered questions and some confusion about the other story line with the teens.
Overall, this book is a fun read for kids who prefer graphic novels or who would rather read books that contain more pictures than text.
It is a great way to help children understand the bigger picture of God’s plan for history, starting with Creation and culminating with Christ.