New Holiday Books from the Good Book Co. for Children | Seek and Find: The First Christmas by Sarah Parker, plus an activity book and The Christmas Surprise by Steph Williams
* I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of these books from The Good Book Company. All thoughts are my own and I was not required to write a positive review. This blog post includes affiliate links. View my affiliate disclosure here.
Seek and Find: The First Christmas Book and Activity Book
By Sarah Parker, illustrated by Andre Parker
Published by The GoodBook Company
Ages 2+ | Part of the Seek and Find series.
Young children will love interacting with the Christmas story as they find, count, and sort over 450 hidden things in this large-format board book.
They will learn key truths about the first Christmas through the biblically faithful illustrations and retellings of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth.
Contents:
News for Mary - Jesus Is God's Son
A Long Journey - God Always Keeps His Promises
Busy Bethlehem - Jesus Is Our Humble King
Jesus Is Born - Jesus Is God with Us
The Shepherds - Jesus Is Our Savior
The Wise Men - Jesus Is Our Promised King
An Angry King - Jesus Is Our True King
Gifts for Jesus - Jesus Is Our King of Kings
My Thoughts: Interactive books are always a win in our home! They’re fun, encourage thinking skills and concentration, plus books such as Seek and Find: The First Christmas, offer big truths for little hearts. The pages in this book are large and colorful while the “seek” aspect is challenging and exciting. I love that there is a mix of Biblical scenes that include people and animals. We found them to be delightful.
There is a small paragraph on each page offering the Christmas story, broken down in a way children can understand.
The paperback activity book that accompanies the hardcover Seek and Find book is appropriate for ages 4-7, in my opinion. My daughter is 4.5 and she is able to complete the majority of the puzzles, counting challenges and ‘spot the difference’ activities. She especially loves the mazes! The Activity Book follows the same order as the hardcover book and has the same paragraph (or big truth) on it as a coloring page, so we are reading one page a day in the Seek and Find book and then using colored pencils to complete the activities on the accompanying spread in the activity book that day. It’s been fun to do these activities together and spread out the fun over the advent season!
These books would be great for young siblings or families to do together. They’re interactive, can span a range of ages, tell the Christmas story and offer some fabulous Biblical truths, such as “Jesus is our rescuer,” and “Jesus is our true King”, always pointing little hearts back to Jesus! They’d make a great gift or addition to advent activities and family time!
Age 2+ | Part of the Little Me, Big God series
This simple and biblically-faithful little book will teach toddlers all about the first Christmas. Fun illustrations will engage young children as they listen to God’s word.
Notes at the back unpack the Bible story.
My Thoughts:
We have several of the Little Me, Big God books in this series and I was excited to add a Christmas version for our preschooler. These square, sturdy paperback books are a fun size that my daughter loves to flip through, studying the illustrations which are very eye-catching and full of expression.
The words to this story are very basic, use quite a bit of exclamation and will capture a little one’s attention. Because it’s short in nature, there’s not a lot of deep truths to it. Instead, it focuses more on the surprise that accompanied Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, the surprise of the star in the sky seen by the wise man, the surprise of the shepherds in the field and the surprise that God’s son came to do something for everyone, including the reader.
I was disappointed this didn’t cover more of the plan of salvation, specifically repentance, or the fact that Jesus is God’s Son. I would like to have had the book explain more that Jesus came to save us and provide eternal life, not just fix a broken world. As a result, I’ll use the book as a conversation starter and I will be expounding on God’s plan of salvation, His deity and His promise of eternal life with my preschooler after we read this book.
