We finally ended up with an old Bible story book, “Hurlbut’s Story of
the Bible,” which my mother recommended. She said it was their Bible
history book in her ELS school growing up. It’s great. It sticks
pretty strictly to the stories themselves, with little or no
commentary. It has 168 stories, but most of them are long enough to
take in two or three chunks, so that the book will last you a year or
longer. In our family we just start over again at the beginning when
we’re done.

out of print but might be available at abebooks.com or amazon.com