God with Us: Bible Stories on the Road to Emmaus - Matt Mikalatos - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Matt Mikalatos

ILLUSTRATOR: David Shephard

GENRE: Graphic Novel

PUBLICATION DATE: April 1, 2025

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A graphic novel that narrates stories from the Bible, using Cleopas’s encounter with Jesus on the way to Emmaus as the foundation. Innovative in concept and execution. Excellent (and racially-authentic) illustrations. Might be a bit tricky for the target audience of middle-graders as the narrative isn't linear. But adult supervision will help. Recommended.

Children are always attracted to books with illustrations. So using a graphic novel to teach them stories from the Bible is a wonderful idea. But this book doesn’t just stop at this basic intent. Rather, its presentation sets it apart from other similar works.

The story uses Cleopas’s trip from Jerusalem to Emmaus as the setting. As the Gospel of Luke mentions only Cleopas by name in its references to this journey that takes place on the day of Jesus’s resurrection, this book adds some fictional characters – Miriam (Cleopas’s wife) and Rachel and Moshe (siblings and Cleopas’s young neighbours) – as his travelling companions. Cleopas and Miriam are grieving after Yeshua’s crucifixion (Jesus is called by his Hebrew name ‘Yeshua’ in this book) and afraid that they might meet a similar fate. So when a stranger joins their group and offers to narrate stories to while away the time during the long walk ahead, they readily accept, not knowing that he was the very person they believed dead: the resurrected Lord Jesus in the flesh.

The Bible never clarifies what Jesus spoke to Cleopas and his companion disciple on the way to Emmaus. So the author has used his creativity to fill in the gaps. And when I say “creativity”, I mean it in the true sense of the word. Yeshua’s narratives and Cleopas and Mary’s discussions bring about a thought-provoking correlation between the stories of the Old Testament and the New Testament. I loved how each of them took a story from one of the Testaments and found a convincing parallel to it in the other Testament. This means that the stories don’t necessarily proceed in chronological Biblical order, but in an order that makes the comparison more feasible: in terms of shared traits with the life of Jesus.

Having two child characters makes a big difference to the storytelling. Rachel and Moshe ask several questions to the “teacher”, which helps us also understand the stories better. There is plenty of humour injected into the narrative, part of which comes through Moshe’s constant references to food.

While the core essence of the content remains biblical, the language is suitably adapted for modern readers. Moshe especially has vocabulary that suits his age. The new, simpler rendition of the Ten Commandments is truly easy for kids to understand. That said, the modified version of The Lord’s Prayer was a little too novel for me.

The parallel storytelling is a clever way of revealing the commonalities between some events of both the testaments. However, no matter how creative, the correlation between the Old Testament and the New Testament needs a certain familiarity with basic biblical stories. The lack of a linear narrative adds to the difficulty of comprehension. Moreover, I felt that the continuity of the panels was a bit off at times. As such, younger children might find the content a bit complicated to understand.

As much as I enjoyed the innovative approach to the story of Jesus, I loved the illustrations even more. The graphics are in digital art with full colour throughout. The flashback scenes come in a different colour scheme, thereby making it somewhat easier to follow the multi-thread narrative. The skin tones and eye colours were racially authentic – no enforced white skin and blue eyes here! Everyone is justifiably Middle-Eastern in appearance. The character features are also suitably rustic instead of catering to modern beauty standards of delicate features and dainty noses. Even the angels aren’t sketched with the standard western “golden blonde” look. I am so used to seeing Mother Mary in blue that seeing her in red garments took some adjusting, but I loved that creative call. The graphic personification of the Word of God was outstanding. A shoutout to that stunning cover with Jesus laughing heartily – I loved it! Books rarely depict this side of Jesus’s personality.

All in all, I loved the creativity of the concept and the illustrations. The execution is also great, but I think it might be a tad complex for younger readers. Adult guidance ought to help.

As current times clearly prove, those indulging in the loudest Bible-thumping are the ones who know least about what’s actually advocated in the Bible. Perhaps this graphic novel would also be a quick way for such ignoramuses to learn the true teachings of God. (Oh, and just so you know, the graphic novel makes the biblical position on women as well as immigrants absolutely clear. And no, it’s not what the current “ruler” of the USA and his stooges want you to believe.)

Definitely recommended to anyone looking to read unusually-structured biblical stories in a graphic-novel format. This book would make a great gift, especially on special occasions such as Easter, confirmation and so on. The official target audience for this book is middle-graders, but it works even better for older readers.

My thanks to WaterBrook & Multnomah for providing the DRC of “God with Us: Bible Stories on the Road to Emmaus” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.