To Everything There Is a Season

 To Everything There Is a Season
Illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon
Copyright 1998
Format: Hardcover
Status: Available on Amazon and ebay
Conclusion:  Buy it! It's absolutely worth it!


I picked up this book from our local library's discarded book sale. It is in practically perfect condition, so I can only assume it was being discarded because people just weren't checking it out. What a shame!  This is such a wonderful book! If I had to pick my favorite Bible storybook in our collection, it would probably be this one.  It is such an amazing book on so many levels!

The Good Points:

  • The words are taken straight from the Bible. It's the King James translation of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and concludes with the New King James translation of Ecclesiastes 1:4.
  • The artwork is gorgeous! Each page uses a different style of art from a different world culture to illustrate the verse. 
  • The end of the book tells you where the art is from and gives you some details about that culture and how they saw or interacted with the concept in that verse.  The illustrators did a wonderful job selecting cultures that had specific beliefs about that particular verse to use for those illustrations.  I'm still marveling at the amount of time and thought that went into putting this book together.
  • You can even use this book as a starting point to teach some history and geography lessons.

The Discrepancies:

  • None. The words come straight from the Bible. It's hard to make any mistakes when the words come straight from the Source.
You might be wondering if the King James translation makes this book difficult for children to understand. The answer is no, not at all!  The language of those particular verses is surprisingly modern and simple.  There might be a few words that you would need to explain, like "rend" or "weep," but overall these are very easy verses for kids to understand, even in the King James version. The illustrations are also very clear in depicting those concepts, so it is easy to have children examine the picture and try to figure out the meaning of unknown words. Amazon recommends this book for ages 6-10, but even my three year old son loves this book.  Oh, and surprisingly, I once had my (non-Christian) parents read this book and even they enjoyed it!  If a book of Bible verses can even be appreciated by non-believers, that certainly says something about its amazing quality.  Seriously, go buy this book!  It's worth every penny you spend on it!






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