This review may contain Amazon Affiliate Links.

By request of a couple different blog followers, I recently read The Wind, the Road, and the Way, one of Jenny L. Cote’s popular Epic Order of Seven series. This Biblical fiction series follows the adventures of seven special talking animals who, in this fantasized version of the Bible, play a key role in helping Jesus and His apostles. Sound a bit bizarre? Well, it is definitely a creative interpretation. In this part of the series, Max, Liz, and the other animals race around freeing Peter and Paul from jail and conversing with Mary and Jesus. The question is: are these books misleading for Catholic kids?

To Give Due Credit

The commendable part of this series is that Cote really does do a tremendous job weaving in some serious Biblical exegesis. In this book which focuses on the end of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, she includes explanations of Jewish feasts and how Jesus fulfills them. She explains how Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecies. She includes interesting tidbits about what the number of fish the disciples catch represents, and what a net breaking or not breaking might symbolize. There’s a lot of fascinating information that I would love my kids to encounter. But, big caveat here, not all the exegesis is is line with Catholic teaching.

Out of Line with Catholic Teaching

For all the solid exegetical details Cote includes, whenever she retells a part of the Bible that supports Catholic teaching, she ignores the implications, or even changes details to suit her story line. For example, in the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaeus in Luke 24:13-35, Catholic scholars typically interpret the disciples recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread as a Eucharistic reference. Cote instead adds in her own details about the disciples noticing Jesus’ pierced hands during the meal and thus recognizing Him.

Another convenient example of skirting tricky verses comes with anything to do with Peter and Petrine privelege. In fact, I laughed about the explanation of Matthew 16 which somehow completely ignored that the verse is about Peter at all.

But the big deal breaker for me was that Cote takes the common Protestant position that Mary had other children. In parts of The Wind, the Road, the Way, Mary is described as interacting with her four “other sons,” Jude, James, Simon, and Joses. Denying Mary’s perpetual virginity is a very common Protestant stance, and another example of why the theology and exegesis in these books cannot be trusted.

I’ll pass

Although I appreciate Cote’s attempt to bring Biblical exegesis to tweens and teens in an accessible package, I cannot recommend her books for Catholic readers. Unless a parent is willing to put considerable effort into dissecting these books sentence by sentence with their child and verifying or disproving the exegetical claims, there is a serious danger that young Catholic readers will become confused or shaken in their faith. I’d rather have my kids reading great Catholic Biblical exegetical works like Scott Hahn’s Understanding The Scriptures, Life of Jesus, or, for younger readers, Cavin’s Great Adventure Storybook.