So for me, the Bibles left really come down to personal taste and preference.

Specifically, what theme are your children interested in.

Each of the remaining Bibles have lots of great features and I don’t think there’s much value in trying to distinguish slight variations between them. All the remaining Bibles have a nice selection of helps for kids as they read.

Kids Bible for Space and Time Travel Kids:

So…if your kids like a Space/Time Travel feel then they would probably love the Airship Genesis Bible. The 5 explorers who make up the Airship Genesis Exploration Squad guide kids through the Bible and help them discover more about what it says and what it means.

I also really loved the extra audio episodes on the Airship Genesis website. They remind me of the Adventures in Odyssey episodes i used to listen to as a kid. Obviously the setting is very different as the kids aren’t ever at Whit’s End … but the stories and the concept is great.

One other feature of this Bible I really liked was that it was full color throughout. I noticed on some of the other Bibles that there were special inserts that had full color, but the Bible pages themselves and the extra features on them were in black and white, or black and blue, etc..

A Bible not being full color thought isn’t the end of the world, but I do think it takes away a bit of the “wow factor” when a kid is looking through a Bible. A kid’s world these days is always in full color so it makes sense to me that their Bible shouldn’t be any different. I want a kid’s Bible to be just as exciting looking as anything they see on a phone or on TV. A full-color presentation helps make that possible.

Alright…enough on color, let’s move on!

Kids Bible for Hollywood / Movie Kids:

The NIV Study Bible for Kids is themed around a movie / Hollywood production theme. You’ll notice the features are titled to reflect this: “Spotlight”, “Starring Roles”, “Action!”, etc….

I didn’t go through and count the number of features in each of the Bibles, but just thumbing through it there does seem to be a lot of different features. My impression is that there are more special features in this Bible than some of the others.

One downside for me is the lack of supporting visuals. The color in the Bible is great, but there aren’t characters or other illustrations to ‘break up’ the text. The only ‘cartoons’ or ‘illustrations’ in the Bible are the icons for each of the features. When you compare this to some of the other ones there’s a lack of interesting characters or animals or whatever to keep the pages from becoming all text.

This is perhaps a minor detail…but something I definitely noticed.

Kids Bible for "Hands On" Kids:

The Hands On Bible was a bit of a surprise to me. I thought the cover design was cool when I first bought it, but I didn’t expect the interiors to be as interesting as they are.

I guess I’m a bit of a pessimist that way.

When you get inside The Hands On Bible you’ll find a lot of object lessons, basically. As the title suggests there are lots of opportunities for the kids to learn in a hands-on way about the ideas and lessons from Scripture.

Some of the activities are things like making a friendship bracelet (in the book of Ruth) while others are more ‘science experiment-y” like turning something bad into something good using dryer lint (in the book of Daniel).

I love this kind of stuff. Kids are active…give them fun active stuff to do to reinforce the ideas in Scripture.

One knock on this Bible for me, would be the lack of color. With the exception of a few inserts, the pages are black text with dark blue headings. My printing this way (it’s called 2-color) the printer saves a lot of money in production, but when you compare the interiors of this Bible to some of the others, the lack of color stands out.

Are full color pages a game-breaker for me?

Nope.

Kids Bible for Outdoor/Adventure Kids:

The NIV Adventure Bible has got to be the most popular kids Bible that churches are using these days. I see this thing all the time.

So it works for a LOT of people.

I know from experience that it being in the NIV gives it a great head start. I’ve seen many a Sunday School leader use a less kid-friendly Bible if it means using a preferred translation.

Based on my comments above about the other Bibles I do have to say I like the full color interior pages. Although I wouldn’t call the pages ‘brilliant’ in color (many of the pages almost look printed in just 2 colors) they do splash colored features throughout the text.

If you like the Adventure / Outdoors theme I could see how this Bible would be super attractive for you. It’s got a lot of fun animals running through it, and at the end of the day…what kid doesn’t love adventure!

If I had a critique of the Bible I would say it’s light on additional information in its extra features. A lot of the features in the Bible tended to be on the shorter side as compared to some of the other Bibles I looked at.

Best Kids Bible for Readability:

The Following Jesus Bible gives a nice clean presentation of the text. I’d say just on the basis of ‘readability’ this Bible is the best of the group. I don’t think it has the strongest feature set…but I do love the layout of the text itself.

The Following Jesus Bible strikes me as a ‘conservative’ approach to a kid’s Bible. If you aren’t really into the ‘fun’ style of kids Bibles this one stands in contrast to those rather nicely. I wasn’t blown away by any of the features, but it certainly hold’s it own among the lot.

At the End of the Day:

The best Bible for your kids (or your Sunday School class) is a personal decision. You know the kid WAAAYYYY better than I ever will. So I will present my opinion of some of the best options - but whatever you choose - deciding to buy an exciting study Bible for a child is ALWAYS a great idea.