I’m a sucker for thrift store books. I mean, a dollar or less for a book? And a whole shelf of them? I can’t get enough.
A few months ago, I was at the thrift store and noticed a stack of books that were obviously part of a series. I began to look through them and it was a whole slew of old Arch Books
These books are printed by Concordia Publishing and apparently, it’s a book club type thing. You subscribe and get ten books each shipment. I’m not sure if the new books are reissues of the old books or completely new versions. Regardless, if you do the book club, you’ll receive 80 books!
You can also get the old books from the 60’s and 70’s (my faves) on Amazon (or in a thrift store, clearly). I have a few of the books from the 90’s and sadly, the illustrations are just…well, 90’s. As I looked through my stash for this post, I realized I have quite a few of the newest versions, too and realized one of my favorite Christmas books is one of the Arch books!
Besides the old illustrations, my favorite part of these books is that they fictionalize parables and other small stories in the Bible.
One of my faves is 2 Men in the Temple (just look at that title font!) which is based on Luke 18:9-14.
Another good one is Sir Abner and His Grape Pickers based on the parable in Matthew 20. Don’t you love the colors?
I think these are great supplements to your library and I’d love to have the whole collection–from any decade! Keep your eyes open next time you’re at the thrift store and snag a few!
Do you have any Arch books at home?
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I grew up on these books, also. Wanted to share them with my kids because of the heritage that went with them and all the good memories, but what I found was a fantastic way to share scripture. Also, my husband did not grow up learning the Bible. He has read these books to the kids and learned right along with them. Our viewpoint is little different on a couple of books (like baptism), but the value far outweighs those few titles we don’t read. And, the rhyme is so important in helping little ones with brain development!
So cool, Lori! I totally forgot to mention they were in rhyme!
I noticed that Concordia is a Luthern publishing company, so that would help you (or any of us) know their theology, too. But like you said, the stories are so basic-Bible-stories that they are definitely great to help magnify the truths from the Bible! 🙂
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I too have many memories of these books as a child. We have spent hours reading these books with our children. I’ve found a lot of ours at LifeWay Books and ChristianBooksDistributor(CBD).
We also have a lot of these books, found a thrift stores and yardsales. You have a couple I’ve never seen, like the two men in a temple. I didn’t know they were sold as a book club.! Love these.
My relationship with Jesus started with an Arch Book – The King’s Invitation. They will always have a special place in my heart. We love to pick them up used as I’m partial to the 60’s/70’s artwork. I’ve also not been as happy with the text in later editions.
How cool, Heather! I agree that the earlier ones are best. Altho’ I do love one of the newer Christmas books (I wrote a post about it and CANNOT find it!) b/c it includes Jesus’ death and resurrection.
(ps: I get to see you SOOOON! Yay!)
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So excited to see you next week too!
As I was falling asleep last night, I started remembering all of the NEW Arch books that I also love. (My fav’s are the Pentecost and Ascension accounts). It’s funny how one or two blah experiences color your view of something. I’ve only have 1 or 2 that I haven’t cared for and the nostalgic part of me looks past any of that with the older one’s because the artwork takes me back to my childhood. lol.
Loving your series. Props to blogging every.single.day.
Sir Abner! I’ve got that and it was one of mine. We’ve got a random selection of Arch books that were mine and others that have come from who knows where along the way. The silly thing is that we live literally 2 blocks away from Concordia Publishing and we’ve never visited. I know. I shouldn’t even mention it it’s so shameful ;). I was hoping to go last year for a field trip but never made it happen. I need to work on setting that up for this year. Actually, I looked at their site a bit back and I think they have tours daily or weekly. We might just end up going and doing that since planning it out is obviously beyond my abilities.
You could totally do a road trip and swing by for coffee on your way there! (PS On our way back from vacay Saturday we passed the sign for New Salem but we missed the exit before we could make a spontaneous stop. It made me think of you. I was kicking myself but then later thinking it’s probably a national thing so probably closed anyway. We did stop in Springfield again, it was closed too but you could still walk around the Lincoln neighborhood.)
Well stink. Just looked and it’s a State site so probably open. Bummer, shouldn’t have looked. Ignorance was more forgiving.