Customer Reviews

Religions Explained: A Beginner's Guide to World Faiths (Henry Holt Reference Book)

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This Henry Holt reference volume for children includes much of everything you ever wanted to know about world religions, from ancient practices to living faiths through the development of new belief systems, Ganeri takes us on a brightly illustrated journey around the world and through the centuries. Focusing on the major world religions, Ganeri shares the history, practice, and festivals celebrated thousands of years ago and today. Difficult as it is to fit the idea of comparative religion into 69 pages for children, Ganeri has done an admirable job including basic information without crossing the line into controversial areas. She manages to mention the importance of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to Jews and to Muslims, but avoids the bigger political fallout surrounding those beliefs. Ganeri seems to focus Christian information on "high church" beackgrounds, choosing to describe missionary work as that performed by "nuns and monks," and including pictures of robed priests and formal cathedrals to describe how Christians worship. But overall, this is a nice collection of information from a broad background, and the Henry Holt name gives more credence to inclusion in a school library.

As an atheist, I'm always looking for materials that will teach my children about religions without indoctrinating them into a particular faith. This book does exactly does. Any slant it has could be described as secular (dates, for example, are told as BCE - before common era - and CE - common era), but each religion (well, at least the extant ones) is shown a lot of respect. The book covers all the major religions and several minor ones (zoroastrianism, jainism, hare krishnas, etc.). But because of its scope, descriptions of any but the largest monotheistic faiths are very short. The book is very well written, in a language that is perfect for my 3rd grader.

I DID NOT receive this book. I emailed the seller, and he suggested to wait a little more. Almost a month has passed- no book. I would still like to get it.