Children's Books for Liberal Christians 6 Christmas Version

I saw this in the LTP  catalogue at work. I was ordering some prayer books or something and on a whim decided to order this:

I knew it was kind of a risk, LTP is not known to be a liberal publisher really. I love nativity scenes and so do my kids, I figured It couldn't be that bad.  Besides I had a 20% off coupon at a bookstore and a gift card- so it was essentially free.

I highly recommend this!

So what it is is this. . . it is a whole set of paper dolls that include stable, sheep, animals, wise people, shepherds, Mary & Joseph, Jesus, and Anna and Simeon, Gabriel,  It also has several pages on with stories to read to your children while they play out the characters.

It also has several pages of stories to read to your kids while they select the right characters and play with them, songs to sing with the characters in them, advice on when to introduce stories to be cohesive the what is shared in the Lectionary at church (this final bit wasn't that important to me personally)

Thoughts:

I really really love the characters.  They are sturdy enough to be toys and still paper dolls.  We only ripped two while putting it together, and, since I am not a very careful person, I consider that a huge success.  I love all the sheep, there are so many!  The shepherds are apparently career shepherds not just hobbyists.

• The people are brown with dark hair and dark eyes.
• The shepherds and one of the Magi are gender neutral. So we are calling them women. In fact, one of the shepherds is now called LilyBell.
•   I want my daughters to see the faces of women around the nativity and see how they belong to the birth story beyond just imagining themselves as Mary.  SOohaving faces of women among the shepherds and the Wise People are really important to me!

The Instructional bit:

I actually really like that there are instructions for how to play with these things.  There are stories to read and and some songs to sing.  I really appreciate family ritual and this is a mix of play, ritual, story and song.  I think it is great in that way.  It does not demand parental creativity it allows for family time!

My problem with the writing part is that the language is really traditional.  If you are totally comfortable with the language used in the Revised Translation of the Liturgy (Catholics) then you will be fine, but I have to edit to be comfortable myself.  I take out lord and put in God, I take out Wise Men and put in Wise, I take out relations and say sex.  Because the script is not written for a child to read along but for a parent to narrate while children have the people do the actions it is actually easier to edit than a book- because I don't have to write in the book...

So there it is. I am really glad that we got this. It was fun to put together and really I think it was a good purchase for us.

I would actually love it if they would do a whole serious of BYO.. (build your owns) I would love do have a build your own ressurection scene, build your own Eden, Build your own Exodus...

You can purchase it from LTP here!
or on amazon here