When the Beginning Began: Stories about God, the Creatures, and Us

Julius Lester has succeeded where other authors have failed. He has successfully gotten the attention of my 9 year-old while at the same time using beautiful imagery and humor to tell Genesis to younger children who find standard bible stories dry and far from compelling. He should do one of Exodus. If he could retell Leviticus it would truly be a miracle!

This book has beautiful illustrations and can be used for a great way to expand minds as to how the earth and all that's on it came to be. It can also help children use their imagination to experience God being refered to as a woman. Lester uses great similes. This book is beautifully written.

When I first glanced through Julius Lester's take on creation I thought I would never read it through. I tend to view most retellings of Creation based on how they represent Eve and whether they allot any responsibility at all to Adam - and I was afraid that this book, like so many others, would fall short of my hopes. Then, as I began reading, I thought I loved it so much that it would be the easiest book I ever reviewed for anyone. Instead, the book forced me to explore so many facets of possibility - both of my own sense of God and how others might feel about the different aspects of this book - that it became a decidedly more complex task. Perhaps a book that raises more questions that it provides answers for is the greatest book of all - but that doesn't make it a simple task for the reviewer!Julius Lester is an African American Jewish convert and as such he brings an amazingly fresh view of one of the best known Judeo-Christian tales. In his introduction he explains to parents and older children about the Jewish method of using stories to explore the realm of possibility between the sparse lines of sacred text. He encourages parents to omit sections they may not feel comfortable with, and he adds an element from Afro-American folklore: Lester's God is not necessarily all-knowing. He (sometimes she) is playful and makes mistakes, and a lot of things seem to happen by accident, including the discovery that he even has the ability to create.Lester begins with God and the angels sitting alone in dark timelessness with nothing to do. Once God makes the discovery that his words produce results, not everything runs smoothly; there are animals who are disgruntled being who they are and Satan opens a school to teach angels how to clip the wings on others who are resting as well as how to sneak off to visit Earth without God knowing. He creates man and woman despite the warnings from some of the angels, and while I was at first concerned that the book might me misogynistic in regards to the eating of the forbidden fruit, Lester does a remarkable job of making the mistakes all around seem like obvious human realities - as well as making it clear that God continues to forgive and love and accept what he knew all along was going to happen.Amidst the humor of the text are profound questions: Who is God? What is God? What do angels think? Why did God make the choices that he did? To some, both the humor and the questions may seem disrespectful - I even asked myself that question more than once throughout the book. Yet, in my own experience working through my thoughts and feelings, I felt a stronger sense of connection to the Divine in the universe and saw a million windows of opportunity in the conversations I would expect to have with my son as we read it together. Lester's work makes the exploration of religion come alive.Parents would do well to pre-read this book and explore their own feelings and

Wearing simultaneously the hats of story-teller, dedicated scholar, and observant Jew, Professor Julius Lester has crafted an engaging clutch of stories which present the Bible's account of the world's creation. These stories use as their point of departure many of the "midrashim", the rabbinic stories of centuries past, which came into being to amplify and clarify what is sometimes only implicit in the text. He does so utilizing the same skills he has used so effectively before: humor, imaginative language, and a willingness to flirt with irreverence for the sake of opening the reader up to new possibilities to be found in this ancient recounting of how God brought the world and its creatures into being. Rabbi Marc Gellman's excellent book, "Does God Have A Big Toe?", explores similar territory but Professor Lester's work lends itself especially well to oral presentation. The conversations amongst the minstering angels are hip, funny and thought-provoking, and will send readers of any religious persuasion back to the opening chapters of Genesis with eyes and minds opened wide. Emily Lisker's droll full-color illustrations do a lovely job of opening up the text even further.This book will find a place of honor on my shelf, alongside others which serve as gateways to a deeper understanding of our Scriptural legacy.