calistareads's review against another edition
3.0
This is the story of Jonah and the Whale or Jonah and the fish as told in the bible. There is a lot of information at the end of the story and Jonah is also in the Koran. He is told to go to Nineveh, which was thought of as the greatest city in the world at that time. To me, the most memorable thing is Jonah being swallowed by the whale. That was like a page and not much was made of that here.
What strikes me with this story is that Jonah tells Nineveh to change their evil ways and amazingly, the city does. They totally repent and God spares them. This upsets Jonah. He wanted them to be destroyed. I find that so interesting. To see a whole city repent that way from one prophet is pretty amazing. Can you imagine one person walking into New York and saying to repent and mend your evils ways and everyone putting on sack clothes and repenting? I can’t. Anyway, now the city is simply ruins.
This is a nice story of Jonah. It does make me wonder what ‘evil’ the people were doing. There is no definition of what it was. Was it slavery? How people treated one another? Idol worship? This story did not elaborate. You can’t change behavior if you are only guessing at what is being done wrong. Who knows?
The kids knew this story from Sunday School and it’s still a popular one. The niece gave this 4 stars. It was pretty gross inside the fish and she thought that would be terrible. The nephew gave this 4 stars and he thought it would be cool to ride around the ocean inside a fish. I said, I bet it stank.
What strikes me with this story is that Jonah tells Nineveh to change their evil ways and amazingly, the city does. They totally repent and God spares them. This upsets Jonah. He wanted them to be destroyed. I find that so interesting. To see a whole city repent that way from one prophet is pretty amazing. Can you imagine one person walking into New York and saying to repent and mend your evils ways and everyone putting on sack clothes and repenting? I can’t. Anyway, now the city is simply ruins.
This is a nice story of Jonah. It does make me wonder what ‘evil’ the people were doing. There is no definition of what it was. Was it slavery? How people treated one another? Idol worship? This story did not elaborate. You can’t change behavior if you are only guessing at what is being done wrong. Who knows?
The kids knew this story from Sunday School and it’s still a popular one. The niece gave this 4 stars. It was pretty gross inside the fish and she thought that would be terrible. The nephew gave this 4 stars and he thought it would be cool to ride around the ocean inside a fish. I said, I bet it stank.
rachel_from_avid_bookshop's review
4.0
Every book Peter Spier illustrates is made with meticulous and beautiful details. This particular book about the story of Jonah has been out of print since 1985. The six pages of background on the story at the back of the book are particularly fascinating.
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