Beautiful Name | Book Review

The cover of this book was so cute, but I had to give it two stars. Read why in my review below.

Children’s curiosity leads them to ask a lot of deep, theological questions. “What is God’s Name” is definitely one of those questions. Having never read author Matt Goselin before, I was interested to see how he brought the answer down to a child’s level.

The art is very whimsical and childish—something that I think children would greatly enjoy. There are a lot of colors and some “sparkly” hints which I really liked. 

We meet Mo, who is a very relatable little girl—she wakes up grumpy, doesn’t like to be reminded of her chores, and snaps back at her mama. In her anger, Mo exclaims, “Lordy, Lordy, Lordy” to which her mom says, “Go to your room right now until you can remember the name of God who loves you so much.” Which then leads Mo on a quest to finding God’s Name. 

Up to this point in the story, it was one that, if I read to my sister, I’d read with discussion. “Was that right for Mo to do? What should she have done? Why was her attitude wrong?” I wouldn’t exactly have given the book to her to read on her own. But I would have read it to her until this point.

The book proceeded to something that I personally disagree with theologically, where God answer Mo’s prayer in a dream (which, I believe that now that we have all of God’s Word, He doesn’t answer our prayers by coming to us in a dream but through His revealed Word). Yes, there were Scriptural examples in the dream (example of answer Moses by saying “I am that I am.”) but then there is the phrase, “The first breath of a baby and the last breath of an old man are speaking my name.” The last half of the book was just… confusing to me. And I’m an adult who was raised on the Bible and its teachings. It is very abstract in its teachings. I couldn’t put my finger on what was so “weird” to me about this, so I handed it to my mom, and she came away with the same conclusion as I did, but without any concise way to put how it was weird without really knowing why.

Because of the theology, it’s not a book that I can personally recommend.

*I received this book from Book Crash and happily provided my honest review*