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GOD'S MAILBOX: More Stories About Stories in the Bible by Marc Gellman

GOD'S MAILBOX: More Stories About Stories in the Bible

By

Pub Date: April 1st, 1996
Publisher: Morrow

This sequel to the highly entertaining Does God Have a Big Toe? (1989) combines retellings of Old Testament stories and invented stories about Biblical characters, mainly Adam and Moses. Geilman leavens the stories with humor and contemporary references; his style of telling (lots of exclamation points, parenthetical asides, slang, and words in italics, etc.) may mark these as intended to be read aloud with lots of hamming and mugging. Perhaps that will put them over with a very young audience, but those reading the tales will find the technique strained, smarmy, and condescending. Instead of ""modern midrashim,"" as Gellman calls them, these laborious attempts at comedy are a combination of pointless anachronisms (God explaining restaurants, television, and computers to Moses, and why there are no video games or Wrestlemania in heaven to Jacob) and a lot of nudging and winking.