Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Book Review: Revolve "Biblezine"

Let me just begin by saying, I am not a religious person. However, this did not impact my review of the Biblezine at all.

   revolve is a "Biblezine" that is meant to essentially translate the Bible into a version for teenagers, particularly females, to read and understand. It is laced with articles about beauty, celebrities, boys and all the other articles that you would expect to read in "Seventeen". It also has stories from the Bible explained in laymen's terms, rather than the Old English that it was originally written in.

      I thought that the Bible stories were very well broken down. As I said, I am not a religious person, so my previous knowledge of the Bible was very limited. However, I actually found myself getting caught up in the stories as if it was a novel! I could definitely see teenagers reading and understanding the Bible in this version.

      Unfortunately, the Bible text is the only thing that I liked about Revolve. It may be because I'm not their target audience (I'm 21, not 16) but the articles that were meant to disguise it as a magazine were poorly written, and would be more suited toward a preteen than a teenager. The beauty tips were horrid, and I hope that the teens who do read it know better than to put olive oil on their hair before leaving the house. &None of the articles had any relevance to the text.

      I think that if the articles were more accurate and less dumbed-down, Revolve could really be beneficial to a lot of teens. The Bible aspect itself is great, but when you throw in mediocre articles that aren't related at all and don't actually have any good tips, you're kind of taking away from the point. Revolve would be much better off dropping the articles altogether and just keeping all of the Biblical content.

      On another note, because I am incredibly weird and pay attention to these kinds of things- the paper that the Biblezine is printed on is actually quite nice and the colors and layout of the pages are very aesthetically pleasing. Overall though, I wouldn't recommend this for teenagers, but would possibly green-light it for the preteen set.
Susie's Note: As a member of BookSneeze, I received a complimentary copy of Revolve to facilitate my review, but was not otherwise compensated.

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