My Very First Bible by Lois Rock. Pictures by Alex Ayliffe. The desire may not be universal, but Mr. FP was starting to want to learn about the stories at church. I had a definite agenda looking for a children’s Bible. The stories should be short enough to be engaging, but long enough to get the gist of the story across. The pictures should be attractive, and the characters should not look like Palestine was located somewhere in Northern Europe. Finally, it should follow the Bible narratives as closely as possible, not adding dialog, motives or morals where they don’t exist in the original. I would like to see stories of the strong Bible women included, and Mr. FP has no patience for prayers, so those aren’t a plus. This Bible met all but one of my (dare I say it) exacting criteria. The stories convey a lot with very simple words. The bright pictures look like they are cut from paper, with appealing round-nosed and smiling characters with tan skin. There’s only one very short prayer at the beginning. The stories tend towards the upbeat, with Goliath and Jesus the only named people killed. My only quibble was that the women were given pretty short shrift. Miriam, Sarah and some unnamed female disciples make appearances, but Esther, Ruth, Mary and Martha don’t appear at all. On the other hand, this is really a greatest hits Bible stories collection. With only 20 stories out of the whole Bible, there’s not a lot of room for minor characters of either gender. It was a great hit with Mr. FP, who would happily have read the whole thing in one sitting. If you’re looking for a children’s Bible either for religious text or basic cultural literacy, this is a good choice.