Stories from the Life of Jesus

The stories from the Gospels about the life of Jesus are among the cornerstones of Western culture. These texts are essential for the reading of books, for looking at art, and for listening to music. Today, when religion is both omnipresent and strangely absent from children’s lives, this version of the Gospels is presented to readers in their cultural context and as a narrative of interest both for the quality of the life it tells as well as for the deep, resonant role it has played in the lives of all of us who live in the Christian and post-Christian world. The parables are so freshly told that they seem new again.

Linda Wolfsgruber, the illustrator for this lavish book, has been deeply familiar with the Bible stories since her childhood in the deeply Catholic Sud Tyrol—today Alto Adige. Her acquaintance with the iconographic roots of the stories enables her to situate the illustrations in historical tradition.

At a time when many groups claim to hold the absolute truth about one religion or another, these books focus on the stories themselves. They aim to give children a greater understanding of their own cultural inheritance.