Darkest Night Brightest Day: A Family Devotional for the Easter Season

Such a great book! I like how it breaks down to 7 days before Easter and 7 days from Easter on. It holds such a great message, but in bit-size pieces. It such a great book to do as a family with kiddos during Easter. I also really liked the questions at the end of each day. It helps kids to better understand what was read.

Perfect for the days leading up to and after Easter! My boys loved this!

Great way to teach children the events around the Passion, death, resurrection and very beginning of the church.

This was an engaging easy to read two week Easter Devotional.

We loved doing this book for Easter, my 5 year old was eager to do the daily readings and the older children wanted to read portions of Scripture. We loved how it brought the accounts of the death and resurrection of Christ all together.
Excellent resource that we look forward to using again next year!

A two week devotional for the family around holy week and resurrection Sunday. My 6 and 7 year olds were really engaged and surprised me with their ability to answer the questions.

This book is not only SO cool for the way it is designed but it does a phenomenal job of putting the scriptures into a story-like format for the whole family!

An impressive grouping of family devotionals to use before and after Easter!

my wife and i love it, and have given it away to several couples with kiddoes

This family devotional is a pure delight! Our family was edified and had great discussions around each chapter. And I love the fact that you flip it from the darkest night to the brightest day, and it gives you a visual reminder of the gospel of our crucified and risen Lord! Great stuff!

My kids loved this book and I loved there were questions for them after each reading and they were very surprised it was a two in one book. I also liked that it continued the story past Easter so my kids could continue to learn and understand just what Easter is about.

My children (6, 5, 2) loved listening to this devotional leading up to Easter. This will be a devotional we read year after year!

Excellent content. Highly recommend.

The dual-cover book is such a beautiful vision for what the cross and resurrection does: turns the entire world upside down.

You start with Darkest Night, which has seven short chapters (one per day) starting with Palm Sunday and moving through Passion week. After finishing Darkest Night, you flip the book on Easter Sunday and spend Easter week celebrating the resurrection, with the final chapter being Pentecost.

Machowski did a great job of faithfully combining the material across the gospels and making it accessible across the age spectrum. Our eight year old, six year old, and four year old all enjoyed this book. Machowski has simple but good questions at the end of each chapter for family discussion.

The only critique I have is that in some of the chapters Machowski used a bit more imagination than others, primarily where he was covering material where the gospels themselves give us less detail. I liked these sections, but it at times made the writing feel a bit uneven. I think the book would have benefitted from Machowski allowing his imagination to run a bit more free (while being faithful to the text, of course) in the sections where he was synthesizing the different gospel accounts together.

I'd strongly recommend this as an Easter devotional, especially if your kids are under 12. We plan to use it again next year. Grateful for Machowski's ministry. If you haven't already, check out his excellent family devotional Long Story Short.

This is a beautiful book. I love how it was designed with ”The Darkest Night” being one “front” and including 7 lessons and “The Brightest Day “being the alternate, flip “front,” including 7 lessons.
“The Darkest Night” includes scripture and lessons beginning at the day of triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on the week of Passover and through the day of His crucifixion and burial. “The Brightest Day” includes scripture from when the stone of the tomb of Jesus was rolled away through the Day of Pentecost.
I do disagree with the author that when the stone was rolled away from the tomb, Jesus walked out. I believe the stone was rolled away not to let Jesus out but to let His disciples see that He was no longer there. There are one or two more questions I have but this leads to discussion and right back to the Bible to search.

Bought for my 4-6 yr olds. Lots of words are big, concepts are big. Personally I loved this book but had to re-explain ALOT to my kids or break it down for them better so they understood. But ultimately we all loved it, and frankly I’m not sure I’d change the older language - maybe write another instead. Great book!

Great little family devotional for Easter. It was written for slightly older children than ours(2-8), we discovered afterwards. But great truths and questions to discuss with the family.

Bought 30 of these book to give to our church families on Palm Sunday! They are so beautiful and I love that it includes questions to help further engage your family in the Easter story. 10/10 would recommend!

I am so glad I found this in time for the Holy Week! The storytelling was powerful and lined up to Scripture! The illustrations were beautiful. I was captivated by the cover!

Love this book! I got it to read to my children each day leading up to Easter. Since I have 6 children, I purchased the ebook version so I could mirror my computer screen on the TV and they could all look at the beautiful pages while I read.

Utterly beautiful book with two front hardcovers and gorgeous illustrations. A wondrous walk through the events leading up to the darkest night and after the brightest day.

We purchased 40 copies to give to families at Easter and are very pleased. Although the print could be larger, in some ways that makes it easier for those with younger children, as I think they will need to paraphrase and "read the pictures". This is a book that will grow with them! We love that it goes all the way to Pentecost and the flipping over of the book makes it so meaningful, especially since most of our children have been through Godly Play. After the crucifixion, we always say "But WE know that is NOT the end of the story!" And on Easter we say, that the resurrection of Jesus turns everything inside out and upside down! We can't wait to present this to our families, this year by Palm Sunday!

Wow, the kids and I loved it. I waited until Good Friday to start, too long! Next year I plan to use it from Palm Sunday to Easter, great discussion questions, perfect for a family devotional. My kids loved the turn and change color scheme as well.

We loved going thru this book. We did the first part “Darkest Night” before Resurrection Sunday, then took the following week to go thru “Brightest Day”. It was nice extending thoughts about Christ’s resurrection past Easter Sunday. It covers events leading up to the crucifixion in The Darkest Night, and resurrection thru Pentecost on The Brightest Day side of the book.

The strength of this book is that it summarizes and harmonizes the accounts of the gospels regarding the events leading up to, and following, the cross. A family will read seven summaries leading up to the cross, and seven summaries of the resurrection to the ascension.

Each day ends with 4 questions that you can ask your family for discussion. The questions vary. However, I find that the questions are not as deep, insightful, or focused on the major points as I would like. I have found this to be the case with other devotionals written by Machowski.

If you want a great book on how to teach your children the Gospel from all of Scripture, check out "Show Them Jesus" which is also printed by New Growth Press. That book won't give you a pre-printed devotional to read each day, rather it will equip you with the skills to point to Jesus and engage your child's heart from any passage of Scripture.

Resurrection Eggs would probably be a better resource for smaller children. And, all children would probably benefit from better questions.

The art, and the creativity of the book are good.

It is not a bad book by any means, and we even provided this book to all the families in our church.

The book finally arrived here in the Philippines after three weeks! I've been looking for a good Easter resource for our family devotion and this book is just perfect. Each chapter is theologically rich but easy to grasp for my young kids. The discussion questions are also very helpful. I love feature where we flip the book to the other side and it takes us to the resurrection of Jesus and the events that followed. The book itself is gorgeous and beautifully illustrated.

This beautiful new children's book from Marty Machowski is so well done. The illustrations are gorgeous and the daily readings are at a good reading level, but not dumbed down. My 12-year-old son and I read the first half together in one sitting. The upside down flip of the book after the second half is quite clever, attention getting, and further illustrates the contrast between the dark days leading up to the crucifixion, and the bright days after the resurrection.

I really love Darkest Night Brightest Day: A Family Devotional for the Easter Season by Marty Machowski! Darkest Night Brightest Day: A Family Devotional for the Easter Season is a unique devotional that tells of the events leading up to Easter (Palm Sunday, The Last Supper, etc.) and the events leading up to Pentecost (Jesus’ Resurrection, Returning to Heaven, etc.). Darkest Night Brightest Day is a two week devotional to do the week before Easter and the week after Easter. Darkest Night Brightest Day is split into two sections–Darkest Night and Brightest Day. The Darkest Night portion deals with the events that led up before Easter. Brightest Day deals with the events after Jesus’ Resurrection and Pentecost. The Darkest Night and Brightest Day has 7 devotions each (14 devotions total) that you can read each day of the designated week. Each of the devotions has discussion questions at the end to reinforce what the family has learned.

Darkest Night Brightest Day: A Family Devotional for the Easter Season appealed to me for different reasons. I loved the uniqueness that I found in the devotional. I loved that the devotional covered the week before Easter and after Easter and the events surrounding them. I like that there are discussion questions at the end of each devotion. I liked how Mr. Machowski explained each of the events so that everyone in the family can understand. I liked how Mr. Machowski explained some of the traditions that we celebrate and why. I also loved the illustrations in the book.

I believe Darkest Night Brightest Day: A Family Devotional for the Easter Season would be a great read for the Easter season or any time of the year. I also believe that the devotional is adaptable to you and your family and how you celebrate Easter. (For example, when talking about Communion, I use juice to represent the blood of Jesus.) If you are looking for a unique Easter devotional, then I recommend Darkest Night Brightest Day: A Family Devotional for the Easter Season!