God’s Amazing Creation
The Story of Seeds
Integrating the biblical origin story into explanations of a plant’s life cycle, God’s Amazing Creation is an edifying picture book.
Lindy Kerr’s Christian picture book God’s Amazing Creation focuses on plants to illustrate how life on Earth came to be.
Pairing introductory science with religious education, the book begins with the biblical story of the world being created in six days. Next, it details different types of plants and seeds that exist on Earth, showcasing coconuts, kernels of corn, watermelon seeds, and peach pits. Cross-section drawings of seeds, quotes from scripture, and playful charts that show a plant’s life cycle from sprouting to bearing seeds round out the book, which ends with explicit directions for planting seeds in a garden.
The illustrations are endearing if rough, showing the infelicities of lines drawn by hand. There’s warmth to the paintbrush strokes and penciled-in lines, and some images contain eye-grabbing blues and greens, as with a drawing of Earth seen from space. Other illustrations, though, shift toward muted pastels, and these less bright images are more rudimentary, the apparent product of colored pencils rather than paint. Further, the recurrent image of a ladybug is not addressed in the text, and its bright coloring tends to contrast too much with the muted images.
The text has an overbearing quality. Pages are filled by large letters in bold print, and there are repeated refrains and instances of choppy language. Multiple times, all plant life processes are attributed to God, but there is otherwise not a clear pattern to the structure and information included. As a result, each large block of writing resists natural engagement.
Further, short passages are superimposed on some images, with plants and seeds speaking as they grow. These thought-bubble texts are arranged in a distracting way, drawing eyes to responses before their inspiring questions. In addition, some questions appear without any clear connection to the drawings or topic of the book, as with “Who eats grass?” These disconnected thoughts are never addressed or otherwise integrated into the context of the book.
An educational picture book about plant biology and Christian beliefs, God’s Amazing Creation uses interactive drawings to describe the life of a seed.
Reviewed by
Willem Marx
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
