Zondervan’s KJV Skinii Bible – Review

The Skinii is a thin and no nonsense handy Bible for everyday use. It has an elastic strap to keep it closed, a pocket on the inside of the back cover for papers, tracks, etc., and the cover is black Italian Duo-Tone over board with rounded corners. It comes with one extremely long ribbon.

The text block is sewn and has no problem lying open anywhere I want it to. The heavy hard cover helps with this. The overall size is 5 3/8 x 8 3/8 x 1 1/16.

The paper is acid free and is decently opaque. It’s more opaque than I expected considering how thin it is. I haven’t tried writing in it but I’m considering breaking out the Pigma Microns. There isn’t enough room for anything other than underlining. The edges are white, which I expect will show smudges after enough use. There are 4 pages in the back for notes.

The print quality is mostly consistent throughout. It’s about a medium darkness. The red-letter is a medium shade also mostly consistent. The font is 8 point with a good amount of leading. The words are spaced apart so that the text never feels cramped. The column width is 2 1/8 and has around 46 characters.

Each verse is indented so they stand apart and are easy to find. It has section headings throughout the text. These are helpful for preaching and teaching. The header shows the book, chapter, and verse number.

One thing I’d like to see added is the translator’s footnotes. The current trend for KJV publishing is going away from them, but they are a part of the translation and I think they should be included. As it is, the text is clean and free from distractions.

There’s a 66 page concordance with 2 columns per page. Entries include various forms of the word. For example, praise includes praised, praises includes praising, praying includes prayed, and prayer includes prayers. There are 12 verses for God. It isn’t something you would want to rely on for your study or sermon prep but it might be helpful for some basic verses or words.

I’ve used the KJV Skinii for carry, reading, and preaching and it does all of them well. I find it to be a very handy size without sacrificing usability. For $17.95, it’s the kind of Bible you can throw around and not worry about what happens to it. I recommend the Zondervan KJV Skinii for general use, carrying on trips, tossing in a backpack, preaching (if you’re okay with an 8 point font and no writing space), and reading.

Zondervan provided this Bible free for review. I was not required to give a positive review – only an honest review.