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A review by panda_incognito
The Night of His Birth by Katherine Paterson
5.0
This Nativity picture book tells the story of Jesus's birth from Mary's perspective, incorporating fictional details while remaining faithful to Scripture. The illustrations are radiant, striking, and occasionally strange, and they suit the poetic text, which does not shy away from the challenging elements of the virgin birth. Most Nativity storybooks sanitize the story and strip it of its divine strangeness, but this one embraces the whole biblical account without any obfuscation or sentimentality, conveying through art and text the tremendous weight of knowing that your newborn baby is God-made-man. Elements of this may appeal most to adults, but children who are raised on the biblical story and can identify everything wrong with their Nativity picture books (e.g., Small Me) will love this.
However, because this book presumes an existing familiarity with the biblical account, some secular readers may trip over unexpected references to Isaiah or to Mary's cousin Elizabeth, who are both mentioned in significant ways but are not explained to the reader. I wish that the author had provided key Bible passages or references in the back of the book to supplement the story for people who are not familiar with the Bible, but hopefully the book will inspire readers to look it up for themselves.
However, because this book presumes an existing familiarity with the biblical account, some secular readers may trip over unexpected references to Isaiah or to Mary's cousin Elizabeth, who are both mentioned in significant ways but are not explained to the reader. I wish that the author had provided key Bible passages or references in the back of the book to supplement the story for people who are not familiar with the Bible, but hopefully the book will inspire readers to look it up for themselves.