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  • Children's Bibles in America: A Reception History of the Story of Noah's Ark in US Children's Bibles by Russell Dalton
  • Nicole L. Wilson (bio)
Russell Dalton. Children's Bibles in America: A Reception History of the Story of Noah's Ark in US Children's Bibles. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Print.

Russell Dalton undertakes a monumental task in his study of the Noah's Ark narrative as he seeks to review hundreds of story book Bibles and Sunday school curricula published for children in the United States from 1763 to 2014 (as well as Bibles published in England but used as models for American texts from 1646–91). In his introduction, he expresses his desire to compose as comprehensive a study as possible, and while he acknowledges the broadness of his goal he simultaneously concedes its limitations due to the extensiveness of the project. Dalton begins his argument by assessing that children's Bibles are an effective way to trace "America's diverse and changing assumptions about the nature of childhood, the purpose of religious education, and the nature of the Bible and its role in religious education" (1). Although he is a professor of religious education, Dalton seeks to initiate an interdisciplinary conversation between the fields of "biblical studies, the history of religion in America, religious education, childhood studies, moral education, and more" (5) in order to study children's Bibles and create a broader awareness of how cultural expectations of biblical literacy (e.g., whether Bibles are used to teach reading skills, moral lessons, or lessons about culture) have changed over time. Dalton's goal for his "reception history" is to "share primary research with scholars and students of various fields of inquiry so that they can make their own connections and raise their own questions" (5). He does this by sharing excerpts from over 375 different children's story books, church lessons, and versions of the Bible.

Dalton explains his choice of the Noah's Ark narrative (Genesis chapters 6–9) as a case study within these Bible story books and Sunday school curricula by claiming it is the most popularly mentioned story in children's Bibles. He asserts the frequent use of the story makes it the most effective in revealing the changing attitude of American culture when using the Bible to teach children about "the character of God, salvation in Jesus Christ, the virtues they should live upon, or to engage the Bible either as historical events or entertaining stories" (7). Dalton considers his work a reception history because his primary objective is to use Noah's story to examine "changes made from the Genesis account" and "to see how those changes have functioned to present children with certain lessons and certain perspectives on life" (17). He does this by chronologically highlighting excerpts and hypothesizing how church leaders might have utilized these texts when they were published. Dalton then organizes the chronological receptions thematically. Each chapter traces various elements of the Noah narrative: adaptation, God's character, Noah as a story of salvation in Jesus Christ, Noah as a model of virtue, and Noah's story as history and amusement. [End Page 272]

Dalton begins his study by exploring the changes made in various adaptations of the Noah narrative regarding the character of God. Regardless of adapters' claims of fidelity, Dalton finds that stories tend to focus on God's wrath, God's patience, or God's friendliness, which leads him to question the artistic freedom of adaption when authors are working with "canonical accounts" (40). He argues that many Christian authors of children's Bibles claim "they have remained faithful to the words and events of the Scripture but have actually proceeded to change the stories of the Bible in significant ways" (40). Some authors, for example, leave out the part of the story where Noah gets drunk. Dalton explains the purpose of certain rhetorical choices, such as using an adult narrator to explain why a "good" God needed to flood the earth; however, he primarily relies on his reader to interpret his claims about the texts through the excerpts he provides. Dalton finds the ways authors present God to...

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