It is HIGH time I reviewed another coloring book, don't you think? Today I shall highlight The Illuminated Catechism, which pairs words from Martin Luther's Small Catechism with Bible verses and additional explanations by Tony Cook, devotional writing prompts, and gorgeous illustrations by Susan Spellman. Of course, this is part of my on-going series on both my blogs about things related to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation beginning.
You know what an "illumination" is, right? A very intricate, detailed drawing used to illustrate the Bible or other book, generally done back in the Middle Ages, but there are much older examples too. If you want to learn more, this Wikipedia article might be helpful.
So anyway, this coloring book takes that idea and kind of does a modern version. The book is split into sections like the Small Catechism. It begins with the Ten Commandments.
Each two-page spread pairs text and pictures -- the one above is for the third commandment, and in the picture above, you can see that it has the commandment, then Luther's explanation, then some more pondering, then a Bible verse. Cut off in that picture is an area on the far left for you to write some of your own thoughts, kind of a mediational journal:
There's a huge variety of pictures, and not all of them are "church-related" at first glance. But they all make sense with what the opposite page is talking about once you read through it.
After the Ten Commandments, we have the Apostle's Creed and an explanation thereof.
Then comes the Lord's Prayer.
I can't wait to color this illustration for the fourth petition, "Give us this day our daily bread." Aren't those sheep cute?
This is the first picture I colored in this book. I used colored pencils for this one, though the other pages I've colored are done with some new gel pens I got for my kids.
After the Lord's Prayer comes a section on the Sacraments, and then this cool part on all sorts of different prayers. They have Martin Luther's morning and evening prayers, but then space to write down some things of your own.
There's also a page about vocation that talks about our duties as children of God. I really want to color this illustration soon too.
And at the end, there's a section about the three main "solas" of the Reformation: Sola Gratia (by grace alone), Sola Fide (by faith alone), Sola Scriptura (by scripture alone). I'm hoping to post more about these another day, probably on my Soliloquy blog instead.
I'm pretty sure I've read this before, back in middle school or high school. But I enjoyed re-reading it nonetheless, and I'm thinking I'll have my son read it as part of his homeschool curriculum this fall. It's definitely easy enough that someone with a middle-school-level reading ability should be able to understand and enjoy it.
This book isn't even 200 pages long, so it's not a very in-depth look at Luther and his theology. Rather, it's a good overview of his life, with lots of information about the political and social aspects of the world he lived in. Anyone who is interested in understanding how and why Luther tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church, the impact his actions had on the world as a whole, and why we're still talking about him 500 years later would probably get a lot from this book.
I was not 100% crazy about the writing style, to be honest. The author wrote most of it as a straight history, which is what I wanted. But once in a while, he would write out a scene as if it were fiction, putting dialog in people's mouths and so on. And I guess I'd rather have one or the other -- either straight history or biographical fiction, not a mix of the two. That is a personal glitch, though, and not one that would cause me to tell people not to read this!
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG. It's very clean, but there are some stressful parts where Luther's life is in danger and so on.
Obviously, this is another post in my series about the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 these to the Wittenburg church's door. I've started posting more about this on my other blog too, if you're interested.
This is my tenth book read and reviewed for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2017. Getting close to my goal of twelve!
I had grand plans to do posts all year long to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenburg church on October 31, 1517. So far I've managed to do one over on my other blog.
Well, it's October. And if I get myself in gear, I can STILL do a pretty cool series of posts about this. I've got quite a few books about the Reformation and Martin Luther I can review, plus some other thoughts to share, so I'll be doing that throughout October both here and on Hamlette's Soliloquy, Lord willing and my life doesn't get even busier. And I'll begin with this review of a brand-new picture book!
This book is seriously cool. The text is all four verses of Martin Luther's great and glorious hymn "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," and it's illustrated by Jason Jaspersen, a guy who attended the same college I did. If you want to see what it looks like inside, the publisher's Facebook page has a video showing the interior pages. The book also includes the tune at the back in case you don't know it or want to play the melody, and it includes the first verse of "God's Word is Our Great Heritage" at the back too, which can be sung to the same tune.
Jaspersen's illustrations are really striking and unique. You know how in the Lord of the Rings movies, whenever Bilbo or Frodo put on the ring, they enter this sort of shadow world with unseen foes? This feels a lot like that -- shadowy forms of angels, demons, and people all blurring together into one realm. The "old evil foe" and his minions are depicted as a vast army in pointy armor trying to overtake the church and believers, and Satan is in one place depicted as a dragon-like creature being slain by Jesus as a knight in armor. In fact, some of the pictures might be a little scary for very little kids -- my five-year-old (who just renamed herself Mad Dog yesterday) was fine with them, but I could see my three-year-old nephew finding them a little too freaky. Just so you know.
In case you didn't know from my "Who Am I?" page or guess it from the fact that I want to highlight stuff about the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther, I am a Lutheran. I'm working on a post about what that means to me for my other blog, and hope to have it up before the week is out. I'm putting that "500" icon with the Luther's Seal in it on the sidebars of both my blogs, and if you click on that, you'll go to all the posts in this series for that blog.
