Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11695 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 16 pages

Customer Reviews

A great celebration of religious differences
This book "fills a gap." It is an excellent foundation book for teaching children to celebrate the rich heritage of religious differences and their cultural connections. The "pop up" feature reinforces the notion that you cannot understand the inner workings of others by simply looking at their exterior. The beautiful art, basic information and excellent production make it a "must" for every home, school, church, temple, mosque and library. The book even make a point of affirming that there is integrity for those who choose not to identify with a major religious tradition.

If all religious leaders were to read and absorb this book, the world would be a much healthier and more joyful place.

A lovely book
I bought this for my childminder to help her tick her multi-cultural box for Ofsted, but ended up buying one for my home as well as it is such a lovely book. An excellent celebration of different religions with a variety of pop ups and flaps makes this a book suitable for a wide age range. I highly recommend it to teachers, parents and childcarers everywhere as a tool to help teach respect, understanding and tolerance. (From a non-believer!)

All Kinds of Beliefs... Except Non-Believers!
This book looks at 6 groups: Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jew, Hindu and Buddhist. The words (easy to read) and pictures are superb - the opening page showing a park full of people is fantastic... only when you look behind the bushes do the 'symbols' appear over each person's head. A superb way of introducing children to the concepts of our mixed society. Well, provided our society falls into one of the above groups, that is!

The book goes on to compare places of worship, appearance, daily routine - all with the aid of interactive flaps which of course engages children. And there is a lovely big fold out poster at the end (difficult to remove, though) with examples of festivals. So this book is worth buying new.

However, at no point in the book are the NAMES of the Gods or religious icons provided - I don't care if it's an oversight or political correctness, it's jolly annoying!!!

The other failing with this book, in my opinion, is that a broader reference is needed just to remind readers that these are not the ONLY groups in the world, that there are many many many more beliefs. AND that there are also non-believers. Children find it very easy to assign labels. I would like to see a touch of lateral thinking and the supposition that NOT everyone CAN be categorised and labelled.