Not The same book I read as a child
★
★
Jacob Vander Meer (Canada) | November 27th, 2025
Well, I'll start with the positives. I ordered two of them for my neices, and both arrived in great condition; also, they arrived much sooner than I expected. It is for those reasons alone that I give two stars instead of one.
I was very disappointed to see that some out the illustrations have had the devils edited out (I'm assuming via AI), while other illustrations from the original book have been removed entirely (such as Satan tempting Christ in the desert and the one with the girl putting money in the collection at church) and replaced with different illustrations which no long match the art style of the rest of the book. I know that, to some people, this may not seem like a good reason for taking off three stars, but I strongly believe that it is. It important that children be shown these representations of evil from a young age so that they will grow up with a healthy fear and revulsion toward sin and a greater determination to avoid it.
We do our children no favours by removing or sugarcoating artistic representations of evil, we do them a great disservice. When I was a child, it was through the pages of this book that I was first introduced to the devil, and it shaped how I came to view sin and temptation growing up, helping me to become the man I am today.
Of course, just to be clear, I'm not blaming Sunrise Marion for this; I blame the publishers who, for some reason, felt it was necessary to "fix" something that was already perfect the way it was, and I feel that people looking to buy this book should know that this was done.