Important Reading for Those Preparing Bibles or Picture Books for Children

Anyone translating or preparing a Bible or picture book for children may find very important food for thought in Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bible's: What's in the Picture?, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper. It asks important questions that will help any translator become much more self-aware about the ideological implications of how stories are reworded, abbreviated, illustrated or otherwise tailored to be read by or for children. Here is just a snippet from my review:

"A key obser- vation points to the “assimilation of biblical narratives and characters to the pedagogical interests of the culture that produces children’s versions” (5). Over and over again the reader is (quite helpfully) reminded that many aspects of children’s Bibles (or Bible storybooks) reflect elements of inter- est to (and are sensitive to the agendas of) the adults who purchase the books rather than the children for whom they are purchased. Koepf suggests that “when the adult creators of Bibles for children remove difficulties from the text, they protect their own alleged omnipotence and underestimate chil- dren’s ability to process complexity, denying children a potential mirror of their most trying experiences and emotions” (15). Furthermore, “authorial decisions to leave out graphic and unpleasant details or to present each nar- rative as a clear-cut moral lesson so as to protect children play a vital role in creating and affirming widespread assumptions that the Bible is a moral, straightforward and didactic text” (16)."

The book as a whole is well worth the time of anyone working on these kinds of important and powerful tools.