A Children's Bible

Evie’s nine-year-old brother Jack is the conscience of A Children’s Bible. His fascination with the natural world and his selfless devotion to rescuing animals serve as a stark contrast to the self-indulgence and apathy of his parents and their friends. Compassionate, brave, and curious, he finds a host of prophetic “symbols” in a book of Bible stories even though he has never been to church and has no religious context. Instead, he brings the contexts of nature and science to the book, using it as a handbook to navigate the catastrophic events of the summer, which include a violent storm, a flood, and an invasion by an armed gang of looters. During the flood, he styles himself after the biblical Noah to save imperiled animals. He also has a piercing insight into the nature of the Trinity, which he interprets as a divine validation of science as humanity’s savior. Like a biblical hero, he shows great courage in the face of adversity. Later, the forced exodus from the sheltering farm brings him close to despair, and he angrily reproaches his father for his part in climate change denial, calling him a “liar.”

Terry is a “very pretentious,” squat, bespectacled boy with an ornate vocabulary. The resident intellectual, he is designed as an homage to the cerebral Piggy from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Terry becomes the children’s unofficial spokesperson, whether he is dealing with parents or armed looters. His civilized diction lets him get away with condescending behavior, as when he informs the parents that their “fitness to maintain order has been undermined” (214). He also speaks for the teens when he refers to the parents as “assholes” and “morons” and offers to give the looters access to the parents’ banking information. Terry is more poised, analytical, and eloquent than any of the parents, whom he seems to regard as children worthy of punishment for their many misdeeds.

A benevolent groundskeeper whose raft was swamped by the storm and who washed up in the reeds near the great house, Burl becomes the novel’s Moses figure and guardian angel. After communing with a “burning bush” swarming with mosquitoes, he leads the children in an impromptu exodus from their parents’ waterlogged compound to a nearby farm that offers protection from flooding and disease. His common sense, altruism, and practical skills render him far more competent than the parents, and the kids give him their trust immediately. A disheveled, socially awkward, outdoors type, he is exactly the kind of unlettered rustic that their arrogant, entitled parents would snub, and this makes the kids trust him all the more. At the farm, he summons a kindred group of “trail angels,” altruistic volunteers who become the kids’ protectors and teachers. Although Burl is wiser and more resourceful than the parents, he doesn’t have all the answers and proves to be helpless against the armed looters. After the owner burns the barn and dispatches the looters, Burl and his friends are implied to leave with the owner of the farm.