Professor Bumblebrain’s bonkers book on the parables

Andy Robb
CWR, 2014, £6.99, 100P., Pbk., ISBN 978-1853459474

The cover images of this colourful book speak eloquently about the contents, picturing a cartoon ‘mad professor’ on all fours and dressed as a pig to help dramatise the parable of the prodigal son.  The inside of the book did not disappoint and my children (a boy aged nine and a girl aged eleven) were very eager to read it and gave it a huge ‘thumbs-up’ – which is just as well seeing it was declared a winner at the Christian Book Awards 2014.

This ‘winning’ volume, like all the others in the series, is filled with full colour cartoons featuring a very pompous, but kindly, professor who is eager to share the delights of the Bible with his young audience.  His jokes are extremely feeble at times and his arrogance pretty overwhelming, but it somehow works to engage the readers!  For a slim volume with large fonts and lots if pictures it packs in a lot of facts with the fun (the significance of ‘the Kingdom’, the Pharisee’s reaction to the parables and approximately fifteen parables and their meanings).  It gives the Bible references along the way and even takes time to explain the gospel message.

Any Christian book that can get children excited about the Bible has to be a winner, so I am very pleased that this has been recognised as such.  Personally I preferred Professor Bumblebrain’s Bonkers Book on Creation, but they all follow a similar, fast paced, format.  I am now being badgered to buy Professor Bumblebrain’s Bonkers Book on Prayer, which is the only title in the series that we do not already own.  Another great series by Andy Robb is the “Fifty … Bible stories”, as in Fifty Weirdest Bible stories, Fifty Goriest Bible Stories etc.  With titles like that, children ought to be captivated and the good news is they are – mine at least!

Contributed by: Karen Hans, BSc, MA, MCLIP, Librarian of St. Martin-in-the-Fields High School for Girls who serves as Prayer Secretary of Christians in Library and Information Services.

This book was announced as winners of the children’s category of the UK Christian Book Awards 2014  at the Christian Resources Exhibition at Esher, Surrey, on Tuesday 13  May 2014.