Books in Old Testament Stories for Children series

Everywhere in the Old Testament, the Fathers of the Church see Christ and the Church revealed. (Moses in the basket is a "type" of baptism, etc.) Using simple verse and colorful, semi-iconographic illustrations that are sweet and reverent, the series aims to introduce children to the profound truths revealed in the pages of the Old Testament. Our hope is that the readers will develop a thirst to meet Christ in the Scriptures that so richly reveal Him. Christ referred to the story of Jonah when He prophesied His own death and Resurrection: Just as Jonah spent three days in the belly of the great fish and then returned to the living, Jesus would spend three days in the belly of the earth and then rise from the dead. The Church reads the Book of Jonah during the Liturgy on Holy Saturday to emphasize this connection. The story of Jonah also figures prominently in Orthodox hymnody, where we implore God to save us from the tempest of our sins as He saved Jonah from the deep.

"The princess took him as her own,And now as Moses he was knownFor from the Nile the princess drewThe child-whose life began anew."The Old Testament Stories for Children series begins with the life of Moses because the Passover (Pascha) of Moses and the Israelites at the Red Sea is the focal point of the Old Covenant and a key scripture associated with Christ's Pascha. The series will continue with several Moses stories and include others that are also associated with Christ's Pascha: Jonah and the fish, the Three Youths in the furnace, Elijah raising the widow's son. Using simple verse and colorful, semi-iconographic illustrations that are both sweet and reverent, the series aims to introduce children and their parents to the profound truths revealed in the pages of the Old Testament. Our hope is that the readers will develop a thirst to meet Christ in the Scriptures that so richly reveal Him.