It’s one thing to read about it in the Bible but quite another to have this exciting story of life-and-death intrigue brought to life for young readers through a modernized  text. The text and abundant illustrations make clear the courage and endurance of Queen Esther and her people, the Jews, who endured great trials in ancient Persia, which at that time ran from India to Ethiopia.

Rarely are the complex stories of the Old Testament teased apart for children.  Queen Esther is the exception, showing the complexities of life for a people who defended their belief in The One True God among foreign belief systems.  Four hundred years before Jesus, about the time the walls of Jerusalem were being built and the Hebrew scribe Ezra was on his way to Jerusalem to restore the laws of Moses, the Jews in Persia suffered persecutions. They are saved from extinction by Esther’s cunning and courage and Mordecia’s bravery.

Esther, a young Jewish woman of astounding beauty, enjoys great wealth and power as the wife of the handsome and powerful Persian ruler, King Xerxes.  She risks it all (including her own life, by revealing her faith) to save her people from Haman, the wicked adviser to the king. 

As revealed in Queen Esther, God protected his Chosen People. All the Jews in Persia prayed to Him, worshiped and obeyed Him, in spite of the real-world dangers this devotion caused. Their faith was rewarded.  The plans of Xerxes’ chief minister to destroy the Jews was thwarted.

By allowing children to experience the fear the Jews experience, then seeing them, through devotion to their God, overcome that fear and the threat that caused it, children are taught the lessons of devotion and trust in The Lord – at an age when most bible stories avoid the complexities of ambivalence in favor of simplicity.

Queen Esther will get kids thinking about the hard questions at an early age. Highly recommended for entertaining and painless early moral training.