Comparative Religion: Investigate the World Through Religious Tradition Paperback – October 13, 2015

My 11 yr old student enjoyed working with this book as we studied the various religions.

I've bought several of these types of books (specifically for kids), and this is the best one I have found so far. Whereas other books aimed at kids sometimes seem to be missing semi important aspects of the religion or culture, as far as I could tell, this one is pretty accurate.

My daughter is using this book for an in person homeschoolers class. It's okay for a very basic overview of religion and a few common religious beliefs. I'd say this is a decent book for elementary school students. As an atheist family, it's good enough as intricacies of religious beliefs don't particularly matter much to us, and since this is an in person class they have time for many further discussions. But if you want a more detailed book, I'd suggest going with The Belief Book or Book of World Religions by McAfee.

Easy read packed with information and well organized.

I teach 7th graders an for the most part they read and understood. At the end of my religion unit students break into groups in order to teach other 7th graders about one religion and this book broke it down nicely for them to work independently.

What I didn't like about this book is that it was dishonest, I assume intentionally, about the teachings of Islam. The book says that Islam preaches non-violence, tolerance etc--- and that simply isn't true. Like Christianity, Islam is a universalist religion, meaning that they believe that they should convert as many as possible around the world to their religion. However, Christianity is to do it "by the word," aka preaching, and Islam does it "by the sword," aka harsh political action or force. Islam also believes in religious government that follows Islamic law-- a caliphate-- and the enforcement religious laws. This is also to apply to non-Muslims living under Islamic societies. The prophet Mohammad, who is considered the perfect Muslim, was a war lord and conqueror, with many slaves and 11 wives, one of them 9 years old. The Hadiths are the books that tell the stories of his life and words said to be directly from him. He committed a lot of violence in the stories, and commanded followers to do the same on several occasions. I know we want to be respectful and not feed in to harsh stereotypes, but we should find a way to do that while still speaking the truth. Obscuring the truth is not productive. Confusing non-Muslims about the teachings of Islam is not productive.

Knowledge for understanding life.🙂

He is very interested in the different religions and this book was read in a couple days and he loved it!