(RNS) — When Word on Fire, the Catholic media organization and publishing company founded by Bishop Robert Barron, approached author and theologian Emily Stimpson Chapman about writing a uniquely Catholic illustrated story Bible, she turned the project down.
At the time, two-and-a-half years ago, her children were 1, 2 and 4, and she was hesitant to take on anything, let alone “some sort of goofy youth Bible,” Stimpson Chapman told RNS from the attic of her Steubenville, Ohio, home — hiding, as she called it, from her three still-young children.
But after hearing the Word on Fire team’s vision to publish an accessible youth Bible, filled with quotes and meditations from Catholic spiritual fathers and saints, and seeing proposed artwork by the illustrator, Latvian artist Diana Renzina, Stimpson Chapman changed her mind.
“I was like, one, I cannot wait to have this Bible for my children, and two, I will be kicking myself for the rest of my life if I don’t say yes to being a part of this project,” Stimpson Chapman said.
Intended for children ages 7 to 11, “The Story of All Stories,” published Monday (Oct. 13), takes readers chronologically through 76 Bible stories, beginning with creation and ending with Revelation. Each story opens with a Bible quote and concludes with a reflection from a church father, ranging from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to Barron, bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota. Renzina’s folk-inspired artwork animates the stories with wa …