When I was eleven my parents gave me a Bible for Christmas. It had a white faux leather cover with “Holy Bible: Concordance” printed in gold on the front.

Although I was too young to fully comprehend its significance to the civilized world, I knew I held in my hands a precious, sacred book, one that contained marvelous stories of mankind and miracles, fish and forbidden fruit, Jesus’s birth and resurrection. I also noted that the Bible seemed to be a book people often quoted from but didn’t necessarily read cover to cover.

If only there had been a picture book like One Perfect Plan: The Bible’s Big Story in Tiny Poems by Nancy Tupper Ling and Alina Chau (WaterBrook, 2023) to help me figure out how to approach such an intimidating tome! I would have had a beautifully illustrated lyrical roadmap of sorts — an appealing introduction to some of the best stories told within the context of the Bible’s larger message.

In One Perfect Plan, Nancy Tupper Ling accomplishes the daunting task of distilling the essence of beloved Bible stories from the Old and New Testaments in luminous rhyming couplets, all beginning with the word “One.” “One garden” for the garden of Eden, “One drop” for the great flood, “One stone” for the story of David and Goliath, and so on. A scriptural reference follows each poem.

The book opens with the Creation story from Genesis I, setting a dramatic tone:

One word --
then light breaks into darkness;
the sky, the seas, and life -- how wondrous!

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