Excellent Catholic Children's Books

John is now old enough at three-and-a-half to be greatly enjoying the Miniature Stories of the Saints series. These little books that cost only two dollars apiece contain authentic stories of the saints, cleaned up a little bit for young children, but still honest (no "Disney effect"). For example, the story of St. John the Baptist does describe that he was martyred by having his head cut off, at the request of Herodius who was angry at St. John because he exposed her for "not following God's laws." We've been reading a lot of these stories of the saints lately, and I am delighted!

Then this morning I got to reference "Saints in Art," which I'd bought some time ago with dreams that I'd use it for teaching religious art to the children. Who knew I'd get to start at three! We had been reading in Miniature Saints about St. Frances of Assisi and I was trying to explain how some paintings are symbolic, the artist draws a picture to tell a story, but it isn't exactly what happened for real. It was very hard to get across that St. Francis wasn't really at the cross on Calvary and didn't really take Jesus down from the cross. John asked why St. Francis was standing on a ball ("Maybe he was playing ball with his friends") so I got down "Saints in Art" to look at classic paints of St. Francis, with explanations of the symbolic elements. There were about six pages of them and it was so meaningful! John was enthralled, he learned all about stigmata, he asked many astute questions. Then he asked if we could look up St. John the Baptist and there were some pretty gruesome pictures of the beheading, but John seemed to accept it calmly. I think children become more terrified if they don't see these religious images until much older, but I could be wrong. Just a hypothesis. Besides, I don't know why it would be okay for children to see cartoon characters be smashed to death by anvils or squeezed till their eyeballs pop out (things we don't watch), but knowing how saints were happily martyred for Christ could be damaging.

I've been in Homeschooling Mama Heaven lately! It's just more proof that children blossom when "twaddle" (as Charlotte Mason called it) is removed. Another example besides literature is how John enjoys listening to classical music, Gregorian chant, and hymns (as well as children's nursery rhyme-type music) and doesn't even know what popular rock or hip hop is.

We also recommend all the Fr. Lovasik books, and we use his Catholic Children's Bible. If you search online for "Lovasik," you'll see that he wrote just about a zillion (give or take) small books for children which are now sold for about two dollars each. They are all edifying and delightful and completely orthodox in their Catholicism, so we're collecting them one by one.

I can't tell you how happy I am to listen to John fall asleep and (though he is "not tired" and is "going to stay awake all night!") he is chattering away in his bed, telling me stories about this saint and that saint, how so-and-so wanted him to pray to his false gods! Could you believe it? But the saint said 'NO!' and then he was killed because he loved Jesus so much. And at some point in the middle of an animated sentence, John falls silent because he's asleep.