The Kingdom of God Bible Storybook is a collection of two beautiful hardcover books by Lithos Kids. The first book covers the Old Testament, and the second covers the New Testament. The covers are embossed and beautiful. The books also include a lovely and helpful attached bookmark that makes it easy to keep up with your spot as you read through the books. The box set is available for $49.99 (Lithos also offers the individual volumes separately.)

The books are full of beautiful full-page illustrations that are engaging, colorful, and tasteful. The Old Testament book contains thirty chapters, with about ten to fifteen pages per chapter. Each chapter has a fully illustrated story from the Bible and a page that introduces the story with a Bible timeline and Bible references.

At the end of each story is a page that shares how this story relates to God's: presence, people, place, and promise. That page also includes discussion questions, a prayer, and a gospel glimpse. The gospel glimpse helps show how the Old Testament ties into the New Testament.
The New Testament book uses a similar style to the Old Testament. Fifteen chapters take you through the events of the New Testament. The Gospel Glimpses in this section sometimes tie back into the Old Testament and, at other times, show from other New Testament scriptures how the story plays a part in the bigger story of the Bible.

Our family used these books as read-aloud devotionals with my five and nine-year-old sons. They enjoyed the storytelling and the stunning illustrations, and I liked that it had discussion questions available. Each chapter took ten to fifteen minutes for us to read and discuss, so it was very manageable for young children.

Older elementary students could read the stories independently, but I would still recommend some parental discussion.

As with many faith-based resources, there were a few stories and discussions with which we had doctrinal disagreements. There is a wide range of doctrinal differences between the various denominations, so it is not uncommon. However, most of the content would be things that most denominations could agree upon. Any differences were easy to adapt as we read and discussed together.

These books shared various stories from the Bible but focused on telling the overall picture of the Bible. It was an excellent resource for helping work through the overall picture and how the Old and New Testaments work together. 

Since there are only thirty chapters in the Old Testament book and fifteen in the New Testament book, it does not include every Bible story or even some of the most common ones. This would not be the right choice if you were looking to be able to find each Bible story in a shorter format, but it is a valuable resource for telling the overall story and would make a great family devotional.

Overall, these books would make a delightful addition to any family's library with children from birth to elementary school. While there may be a few doctrinal points of difference for families, the stories are well told, the questions are engaging, and parents can easily adapt any doctrinal issues as they read and discuss the stories with their children. They work well as a family read-aloud but could also be independent reading for older students.

~Product review by Dawn Peluso, The Old Schoolhouse®, July 2023