Superbook

What Superbook is

Superbook is a free mobile app from CBN that bundles a streaming library of animated Bible episodes with games, scripture memory tools, and parent and teacher resources. The core product is the video library: 68+ full-length 22-minute episodes covering most of the major scripture narratives from Genesis through Acts, each framed as a time-travel adventure where three kid characters (and a robot) get pulled into the actual biblical event.

Around that core, the app stacks the kind of features children’s ministry leaders have asked for: a Bible quiz game with five difficulty tiers, a verse memory deck with audio playback, daily devotionals written at a kid-friendly reading level, and a parent/teacher section that links each episode to a downloadable lesson plan. Everything inside the app is free. Nothing is gated behind a subscription, an account, or an ad break.

Why kids actually finish a Superbook episode

The single biggest practical difference between Superbook and the other major kids’ Bible apps is episode length and production value. YouVersion’s Bible App for Kids gives you short interactive read-throughs — wonderful for preschoolers, less so for a six-year-old who wants something to watch. Superbook gives you a 22-minute fully animated episode with a real score, real voice acting, and a plot. It’s closer to a Saturday-morning cartoon than a Bible storybook.

And the time-travel framing matters more than it sounds. Chris and Joy don’t narrate the story of David and Goliath — they get dropped into the Valley of Elah and stand in the Israelite camp while Goliath is shouting. That framing is what makes the show watchable for kids who would otherwise tune out scripture content. Parents we’ve talked to describe it the same way: the kid asks for "another Superbook" the way they’d ask for another episode of Bluey, not the way they’d ask for another Bible chapter.

68+ animated episodes: the killer feature

The video library is the reason this app exists. Each episode runs roughly 22 minutes — the broadcast television half-hour minus ad breaks — and covers a single scripture event in full narrative: Noah’s Ark, Joseph in Egypt, the Burning Bush, Esther, Jonah, the Sermon on the Mount, the raising of Lazarus, the resurrection, Pentecost. The catalog spans the Old Testament from Creation through the prophets and the New Testament through Acts, with episode counts heavy in the well-known stories and lighter in the prophetic and epistolary material.

The animation itself is the 2010s CBN reboot style — clean, colorful, recognizably CGI but warmly lit, with character designs that don’t feel cheap. It’s not Pixar, and a media-literate ten-year-old will know it isn’t. But it holds attention the way television holds attention, which is more than almost any other kids’ Bible app can claim. Episodes stream from the app and can be downloaded for offline viewing — a feature that pays for itself the first long car ride you take.

Verse memory cards and Bible quiz games

Tap Bible Games on the home screen and you land in the second-most-used section of the app. The Bible Quiz Game runs across five difficulty levels, from "Beginner" (picture-based, no reading required) up through "Bible Scholar" (book/chapter/verse questions that would challenge a confirmation-class teen). Questions cycle through Old Testament, New Testament, and life-of-Christ banks, and kids earn points and unlock characters as they go.

The verse memory cards are the underrated feature. Each card shows a single scripture (KJV, NIV, and a kid-friendly paraphrase are all available depending on the deck), with an audio button that reads the verse aloud and a flip animation that hides and shows the text. Decks are organized by theme — courage, kindness, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, Psalm 23 — and they work. A child who watches the Daniel episode and then runs through the "Be brave" deck three times genuinely remembers the verse a week later. For Sunday school memory work, this alone makes the app worth installing.

Parent dashboard and Sunday school curriculum tie-in

Tucked behind a small Parents/Teachers icon on the home screen is the section that ministry leaders care about most. It links every episode to a free downloadable lesson plan — typically a PDF with a discussion guide, scripture references, an activity, and printable kids’ pages keyed to the story. Children’s pastors use these as either a primary curriculum or as Sunday-school overflow when their main curriculum runs short.

For parents, the same section offers family devotionals organized week-by-week, a "questions kids ask" library with age-appropriate answers, and a parent-controls toggle for the Superbook Club account (the optional kid-profile system). It’s not a full parental-control dashboard in the screen-time-tracking sense — Apple Screen Time still does that better — but it’s enough to let a parent set up a kid profile, see what their child has watched, and pull a Sunday school lesson into family devotions without leaving the app.

Pricing

Where Superbook falls behind

No teen or adult content. The app is firmly for ages roughly 5-11. There’s nothing here for a 14-year-old, and the home-screen branding makes that obvious the moment an older kid opens it. Families with a mix of ages will pair Superbook with something like YouVersion or BibleProject for the older siblings.

No reading-plan or daily-streak system in the YouVersion sense. The devotionals are excellent, but they’re organized week-by-week as content, not as a streak-tracked plan. Kids who like the gamified "don’t break the chain" feeling of YouVersion will not find that here.

Library navigation is functional, not great. Episodes are organized by season, which roughly tracks scripture chronology, but finding a specific story sometimes means scrolling. A proper search-by-scripture-reference feature is the most obvious missing piece in the app.

No multi-language depth. Superbook is dubbed into a remarkable number of languages on the CBN website and broadcast side, but in-app language options for episodes are narrower than the marketing implies. Confirm your language is supported in-app before relying on it.

No Catholic, Orthodox, or LDS framing. The app reflects CBN’s evangelical Protestant background in how it handles sacraments, the early church, and salvation. The bulk of the scripture narrative content is usable across traditions, but families wanting tradition-specific framing will want to supplement with a resource from their own tradition.

Superbook vs. Bible App for Kids vs. Minno

Different strengths. Bible App for Kids (YouVersion) is better for preschool and early-reader ages — its interactive story format is genuinely best-in-class for kids 3-6 who want to tap and play through a story rather than watch one. Superbook is broader and older-skewing: full-length animated episodes that hold a 5-11-year-old’s attention the way a streaming show does, plus games, memory cards, and parent resources stacked around the videos.

Minno (formerly Jelly Telly) is the closest direct competitor to Superbook’s video library — also full-length animated and live-action Bible content for kids, with a Netflix-style streaming interface. The difference is the business model: Minno is a paid subscription (around $7.99/month as of writing), and it carries a wider catalog of third-party kids’ Christian content (VeggieTales, What’s in the Bible?, 3-2-1 Penguins, plus its own originals). Superbook is free, but the catalog is all Superbook — one franchise, one art style, one editorial voice.

The honest answer for most families: install YouVersion’s Bible App for Kids for the under-fives, install Superbook for ages 5 and up, and only pay for Minno if you’ve outgrown Superbook’s catalog and want the broader streaming library. All three can live on the same tablet.

Alternatives to Superbook