Imagine the Great Flood (A Review)

I had the opportunity to review this book Imagine...The Great Flood by Matt Koceich from Barbour Publishing. It's a children's chapter book with an intriguing cover, 110 pages long, and about the size of an average paperback (which is what we received).

The story is about a 10 year-old boy who is struggling with a life challenge, somehow goes back in time to the time when Noah is building the ark, and learns some great lessons that help him to be appreciative of how his life isn't all that hard after all.

I started out by reading this to my boys as a read aloud, but they both said they weren't interested anymore about halfway through. So, I ended up reading the rest of it on my own. I really wish they wanted to hear the rest. I think they didn't quite get to the most interesting parts, and the integrated lessons. I found it to be an easy read, and good for any young reader up to teens. There were some intense parts for sure, but nothing that I found to be too much for even my 6 year-old.

I really loved how engaged Corey (the main character) was with the animals. I have never actually thought about how Noah's family might have interacted with the animals. Were they fierce? Could they really be in the same boat with a lion? Or a rhinoceros? Which by the way, Corey rides one at the end of this book. Who knows if anyone really rode a rhinoceros back when Noah's family was getting ready for the flood, but it was neat to think of the animals as tame creatures that actually helped Noah's family in a way only animals could do to get ready for the great flood.

Another interesting thing brought to my attention from this book is about the people that were on the earth at the time, they were called the "giants." In the book they are referred to as the Nephilim which is the Hebrew name for giant. They made for some pretty fierce enemies in the book, and helped me to visualize how hard it must have been for Noah and his family building a boat, and dealing with all kinds of problems from the people around them. I am sure it wasn't easy back in Noah's time, and this story about the Great Flood really shows how things might have been difficult in getting the animals rounded up and getting on the boat itself. Not to mention the fact that as the giants and others saw that the flood was really happening they were trying to get onto the boat too. I imagine there were a lot of people trying to make their way on when they realized they should have repented and listened!

This book is a nice easy read, and great for kids. What a great way for them to learn a little bit of facts about a well known Bible story. I love that it's not too preachy, and the lessons are left to be learned and understood by the reader. The overall moral is to trust God as Noah did. This is the first book of a series to be written with the next book coming in Spring of 2018 called Imagine..The Ten Plagues.

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