The Action Bible: Heroes and Villains

by David C. Cook

This extensive, full-color guide to Bible characters includes fascinating facts and figures about the Bible’s most curious but sometimes relatable people. Including all-new illustrations from graphic artist Sergio Cariello, The Action Bible Heroes and Villains draws in young readers
   
From Adam and Eve’s most embarrassing moment to the details of a Roman soldier’s armor to Zechariah’s hometown, the unique insights and dynamic illustrations in this jam-packed guide jump off the pages and into kids’ minds and hearts as they meet people just like them whom God used in His redemptive story.

 

160 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2022

About the author

David C. Cook is a nonprofit Christian publisher based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was established in 1875 and publishes fiction and nonfiction. It uses its profits for global ministry. For many years, it published a Christian comic book, Sunday Pix, with stories about the adventures of Christian heroes in many different eras and in many parts of the world.

Reviews

[Brendan McKee · Rating 1 out of 5]

So I first spotted this book at a pawn shop. Months later it was still there and so I bought it because I thought it was hilarious and in a way it did not disappoint. This book is spectacularly silly, trying to make the bible “cool” to appeal to a younger audience. I will say the art is pretty good, but that’s about the only positive I have. Asides from seemingly presenting a pretty fundamentalist view of the bible, this book is highly repetitive and struggles to fill a page - the entry for Balaam, for example, tells the story about him and his donkey three times on the same page.

Don’t spend your money on this book.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up hoping it would be an engaging and fast way to learn some trivia, and I think it mostly fit the bill. The art was fun and evocative of the comic book style, but my main complaint is the text content was laid out pretty strangely, and there often wasn’t a thesis statement that explained the TL;DR of the biblical figure. You’d have to read a bunch of anecdotes, not in chronological order, to try to cobble things together. I definitely picked up some interesting facts, though, like Jacob being married to both Rachel and Leah, Absalom dying from getting his hair stuck in a tree, Samson getting blinded and knocking down a building, and the fact that David of David and Goliath is the same dude as King David (what can I say, I’m not religious, which is why we are here trying to cram trivia in the first place!)

[L. Reed]

Great Read & Awesome Book!

[Jennifer DeBord · Rating 3 out of 5]

Repetitive and some typos. The Action Bible was better. This is a short (thin) book, only 159 pages.

[Franceska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved reading this with my child. It inspired her to pick which saint she would like to be for All Saints day and whom related the most for Confirmation.