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52 - Bible Picture Stories |
Bible Picture Stories
IT has often been said of "Sunday School art" that, like the child in the nursery rhyme, when it was bad, it was horrid. Well, maybe it's not as bad as it once was, and maybe it was too solemn, overly sentimental, and boringly didactic. Of course, it wasn't children's art at all but adult art intended to express what older people thought would appeal to young people-and be good for them. And it was usually very, very serious.
On the next few pages, we present a different kind of approach. The line drawings are reprinted, with the permission of the publishers and the artist, from Bible Stories You Can't Forget-No Matter How Hard You Try, by Marshall Efron and Alfa-Betty Olsen (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1976, 79 pages, $6.95). The illustrator is Ron Barrett, a former advertising art director, editor of The Electric Company Magazine (Children's Television Workshop), and illustrator of Benjamin's 365 Birthdays (1974), a Children's Book Showcase selection. Coming from "ecumenical parentage," a Jewish mother, a Catholic father, he "shopped around for a religion" and "read the Bible a lot."
Of the eight Bible episodes recounted in the book, in contemporary, racy style, we reproduce Ron Barrett's drawings for the Tower of Babel, Pharaoh and Moses, the Prodigal Son, and a double-spread map of "Bibleland." The picture of the Prodigal Son may need some explaining. According to the accompanying story, the two sons were Rudy and Jack. Rudy was "prodigal and profligate, in other words-a punk." And his expensive clothes were bought in "the Big City. Also known as The Apple." When he realized that home (Dullsville) was not as bad as Bottomsville, he decided to return. But on the way back home, he fell into a mud puddle, and "he was covered in so much dirt that radishes and potatoes were growing all over him. He looked like a walking vegetable patch."
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