Book Review of The One Year Book of Family Devotions

I ordered this book from Amazon and paid one cent for a used copy. I thought I was getting the 2000 version, but I received the 1988 version. I very much enjoyed reading the book. I certainly would have used this book with our children, but I didn't know books like this existed. The following comments refer to the 1988 version.

Many of the devotions are stories of children interacting with their parents (or grandparents). The parents often use an object lesson (and this often from nature) to make a point. I found several of the stories very interesting. Here are a few examples:

September 3 The Water's Too Cold!
A young boy's eyes wander to a classmate's paper and he copies a word he doesn't know. The next week he copies more words, but claims he knew most of them anyway. The next week he copied the words directly from her paper. The boy goes swimming with his dad and says the water's ice cold. Dad says it is only until you get used to it. Later that evening Dad says the water is like sin, in that you become numb to sin and it hardly bothers you at all.

May 10 Imperfect Parents
A dad punishes his son for leaving the rake and hoe outside to rust. He then realizes he was the one who left them out. He apologizes to his son and then tells the story of how his dad (grandpa) had punished him unfairly for something. The boy asks if grandpa ever apologized. Dad said grandpa never found out he was wrong. However, Dad felt like God was asking him to forgive grandpa, so he did.

There are almost thirty devotions that talk about sharing of faith with others; I think this is good. There are a few stories about how a person should be satisfied with the gifts God has given him.

You can tell the book is dated because it uses words like typewriter, correction tape, record albums, transistor radio and thrashing to name a few. It talks about "behind the iron curtain" and uses the expression "pulled a face."

I noticed several grammatical errors in the book.

The book says it is for 6-10 year-olds. I think some topics in the book would be more appropriate at an age older than 6. Some difficult topics are dealt with: horoscope reading, abortion, divorce, terminal illness, smoking, use of alcohol and drugs, teenage pregnancy, a young person suicide attempt and sexual touching.

I was curious to know if the 2000 edition simply had a new cover. By using the Look Inside feature on Amazon I can see they did a complete revision. The stories are shortened and I imagine all the dated material has been changed.

The 1988 version uses four different versions of the Bible for the scripture references: The New International Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New King James Version and The Living Bible. The 2000 version uses only one Bible, the New Living Translation.

I would recommend this book for parents. However, I would suggest the children who are old enough look up the scripture texts in the Bible and read them for the devotion. This way the children become familiar with the Bible and are more involved in the devotion. The updated 2000 version, with its shorter stories, is probably better suited for our fast-paced world.

The One Year Book of Family Devotions

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