Girls Who Choose God: Stories of Courageous Women from the Bible Hardcover – August 25, 2014

Love this book! Learned stories I’ve never known and love reading them to my kids!

As a mother of daughters, it is important to me to be able to talk about the women in the scriptures, their stories, their choices, and the fact that they existed at all. It is so easy for the women in the scriptures to be invisible. Like my sons who have the examples of the prophets and the apostles, I'd like my daughters to be able to look up to the courageous and faithful women in the scriptures. Being raised in faith should not mean being raised to think the girls are second best. For these reasons I am very happy with this book. It centers around a specific choice made by each of the women featured, and ends with questions asking when we have, for example, showed courage or sacrificed for our family, etc. My daughter uses it when it is her turn to teach the lesson on Family Night, and we discuss the questions that are posed at the end of each story. It is ideal for that type of use.There are a couple of improvements that could be made. I do enjoy the illustrations and the fact that the biblical women are not portrayed as blonde and blue-eyed, but each of the women look like the same woman in different outfits.I would have enjoyed more detail and more story for each of the women. It is written at the reading level of a 7-8 year old but at the conceptual complexity of a 4 year old. For young children this is fine, but for myself and older kids it is less interesting than it could be. The part that I missed most of all was what came before or after the choice for some of these women. Eve, for example, raised up the first generation of people on the earth, had a long, rich life full of joy and grief. Her story only BEGINS with being kicked out of the Garden of Eden.This is written from an LDS perspective, which, as previous reviewers have noted, is pretty much only different when it comes to Eve. I would have preferred a more nuanced view (Yes we needed Eve to eat the fruit, but it was ALSO a transgression) but as I said, this is good for a 4-5 year old who has trouble with that level of complexity. Since my main complaints are problems inherent in a children's book (can't write to ALL ages, after all) and I am very happy that there are products like this available, I give this book 4 stars.

Although I have all boys, I decided to get this book. I wanted them to see that women can be strong examples of faith in difficult times, as most scripture stories focus on men and their examples. I want them to value each person they meet and appreciate what each has to teach them, regardless of sex. This book helps them to see that women are strong and faithful, even if they aren't named. It also helps them see that seemingly small decisions each day can help them grow closer to God.

I am excited about the idea of this book & I love the artwork, but was a bit disappointed by the text. The stories are too long and wordy for a picture book. There are also too many stories. I couldn't get my 4 year old to sit through the whole thing. As a picture book, I had hoped that it would be geared toward young listeners. I feel like the appropriate age range for this text in this book is like 7-9 years old... but 7-9 yr olds are reading on their own, not having picture books read to them. The questions at the end of each story were also too high-level for young listeners. My young girls were perplexed by questions such as, "When have you chosen to take time for gospel learning?" I would have liked to have seen this idea executed better as a read-aloud book with simpler text and fewer stories. Or, if the authors wanted to keep the more complex text, I would have liked to see a different format (a smaller, "early reader" type book) that is geared at young independent readers. As it is, the book doesn't fit well into either category. I'm glad to own the book, but it won't get as much use in our home as I had hoped.

My 8 year old daughter an I liked the book, and it's a very nice quality, but I feel like it's more suited to the 5 and under age group. She liked the stories, but asked me why I got her a baby book, lol. I REALLY wish it had stated an appropriate age group for this book, or if it did, then I didn't see it, and I even went back just now to look. The stories are nice but extremely brief. I would LOVE to buy another version of this book for the 10-12 year old age group, with longer stories that explore the characters a little better! Or heck, if I can't find one maybe I'll just go ahead and write one.

I bought this book for my three year old niece. I noticed that all of her books about scripture heros contained only men, so I wanted her to know that there are women scripture heros that she can look up to, too. She loves listening to these stories and looking at the pictures. It is consice enough that she can listen to the whole thing without getting bored. Now I never need to worry about her thinking that only men are scripture heros. It has great reflective questions for her to think on, and gets me thinking about my role as a woman in the Kingdom of God, too. I would recommend to anyone with young children, girls or boys.

My three pre-ordered copies came in the mail last week. I got one for each of my girls (they are young adults). We struggled a little to teach relatable role models from the Bible to our daughters and wish we had this book when they were younger, but we are thrilled to have it now. The stories are summarized simply and in an easy to understand way, the illustrations are realistically gorgeous and I love that there is a question that helps us apply the message to our lives. I've ordered three more for baby gifts and I'm excited to share this book with others. Thank you to the authors and illustrator. We'll watch for more from this team!