Easter book attracts fans and skeptics as it blends the story of Christ with the Easter Bunny
On Easter morning around the world children will wake up to baskets full of candy left by the Easter Bunny. Many of those same children will head off to church where they will hear the story of Christ's resurrection. What do the two have in common? Nothing, that is until a new children's book hit the market recently. The children's book, Ester's Easter Tale: How the Easter Bunny Came to Be merges the secular bunny with the Biblical story.
Author Rick Machle's book focuses on Ester, a rabbit who lived in the tomb where Jesus was buried after the crucifixion. In the story, Ester presents her firsthand account of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. It also leads into the story of how she became the Easter bunny.
Machle first wrote Ester's Easter Tale in 1996 as a short story to present during children's time at St. Andrew's United Methodist Church in Littleton, Colo. The couple lives in nearby Aurora and regularly attended the church's Saturday night contemporary worship service. Individual members of the congregation took turns leading the children's time. Mr. Machle's week to preside over children's time happened to fall on Easter weekend that year, and he wanted his story to be different and memorable.
"It aggravated me that a lot of other people who came up were telling things that were really trite," Machle told the Dallas Morning News.
His story of Ester the Bible bunny was well received by the parents who attended that service which inspired Machle and his wife to turn the short story into a book. The book was self-published and began selling a few weeks before Easter last year.
However, now that it is in book form many people are upset with the story. In fact, Machle's own church won't let him read it to the children any more. The church feels that it would be misleading and it would be twisting the truth of the Bible. Christian bookstores have refused to carry the book, so the couple has turned to mainstream bookstores. "Most of them who don't like it are very conservative in their theology and don't tell their kids about the Easter bunny at all," Machle says. "Some people are looking for a fun way to tell their kids about the Easter bunny and where the Easter bunny came from without compromising their faith."
The couple is not giving up on the book, however and plan to expand Ester the Easter bunny's role. Ester is going to be the "Forest Gump" of the Bible. She is going to pop up in at all the important times.
(Source: Dallas Morning News)
