Bob Hartman's Rhyming Bible Songs

Bob Hartman's Rhyming Bible Songs

Welcome to "Bob Hartman's Rhyming Bible Songs", a companion album to the popular storybook "Bob Hartman's Rhyming Bible". Bob Hartman is pretty much the go-to storyteller for reframing the scriptures to communicate with children in a fun and engaging way. Bob has been retelling Bible stories in print for many years with his 1995 classic "The Lion Storyteller Bible" selling over 140,000 copies, he's also the man behind the YouVersion's The Bible App For Kids too! The Rhyming Bible was released in March this year and because of the style of the writing, it lends itself rather nicely to some of those rhymes being put to music. Sam Hargreaves has taken 10 of the rhymes and written and arranged music for 10 songs from the storybook and with Paul Burton they have put together this album. You will hear some voices that you recognise on this album, not only does Bob himself bring his vocals, but worship leader Cathy Burton has also recorded some of these tracks. It is very hard to trim the whole Bible down to 40 poems and then to choose just 10 songs to tell the story of the Bible! So there are some details that are lost along the way. The opening number "It's All Good (Beautiful World)" covers the story of creation before we have "A Snake In The Grass (The Fall)" which the quote above is taken from. You can see from this that you can teach a lot, and remember a lot, through good use of humour, and there are a lot of funny bits in this serious story. Then we skip forward to the story of Moses based around the traditional Hush-a-bye Baby lullaby with "The Baby In The Basket". I think young kids will love this familiar tune, but with all the verses that tell of Moses escape from Pharaoh's genocide, it's definitely a new way to hear the story! We then skip to the familiar scene in the fields on the outskirts of Bethlehem which starts with a tune of "Twinkle Twinkle", for any people looking to do something different for their nativity in School or Children's clubs at church should look into this song "It Begins In Bethlehem (The Shepherds)", the style changes after the first section to something with a bit more funk and soul! We are then into the life and stories of Jesus with "Little Man Up In The Tree (Zacchaeus)" kicking us on with the child-friendly stories. The next track is a great use of rhyme in "Waiting In Line" which is about the disciples stopping the kids from seeing Jesus, although the idea of waiting in line to see Jesus does sound very British! "One Friend, Two Friends, Three Friends, Four" is about the four friends who bring the paralysed man through the house roof. "The Clip-Clop Beat" brings us to a worshipful dance for Palm Sunday and is about as close as this album is going to get to the story of the death of Jesus, which, let's face it, isn't exactly child-friendly! From here we skip onto Pentecost in "Blowing Wind and Tongues Of Flame" and the gift of the Holy Spirit as evidenced by tongues and fire. Then we go to "Everything and Everyone Made New" which looks at the story of John from his calling by Jesus, briefly visiting the cross with Jesus telling John to look after his Mum and then onto the Isle of Patmos and the Revelation of the new heavens and new earth. It's not easy to make the Bible child-friendly and some of it shouldn't be, but at the same time, we don't need to needlessly give kids nightmares! Speaking as someone who has worked as a Children's storyteller myself in many different church and Christian circles it's a fine line to walk to make sure what you are explaining doesn't skip the truth, but is still something that is fun and entertaining whilst bringing the point the settle in a child's mind. I think these songs do an excellent job of this, they are both fun and funny, engaging musically whilst being easy to remember and employ a range of styles, some that are instantly familiar and others that are simple to sing along to. Some of these songs will only come in useful occasionally, but I could definitely see "It Begins In Bethlehem" used for a school nativity - teachers are always looking for something different to tell the same story, so I hope that they will see this resource as a possibility. These are definitely songs that I would let young kids listen too, not all of them will be Sunday School singalongs though as they concentrate on relaying the story more than making a teaching point or being a worship song. However, I think that this is a great resource, especially if you already have or are considering buying the main book. 10/10

Joanna Kneebone

Publisher