Saints

Joan of Arc

Author(s): 
Josephine Poole
This is a beautiful picture book, telling the story of Joan of Arc, from her childhood days to martrydom. The pictures are brilliant, captivating, and evocative. It is an oversized children's book, with the pictures covering two-thirds of the pages, and the text in the remainder. The story is told quite simply, with Joan given positive treatment. The author portrays Joan as a gentle, and yet courageous, religious young woman. Joan of Arc would be suitable for children five years of age, and up. I would highly recommend this book for any family studying the Middle Ages..

Saint John Bosco and Saint Dominic Savio

Book cover: 'Saint John Bosco and Saint Dominic Savio'
Author(s): 
Catherine Beebe
This was the book that got our family "hooked" on the Vision Series. I happened to find it at a Used Book store (Ignatius Press books are fairly easy to spot because of the contrasting color around the author's name on the spine of the book). I didn't expect my children to be interested in full-length books at such a young age (my oldest had just turned five). Somehow we got started and they loved it. This is a particularly good Saint story to start with because St. John Bosco is a special patron of children and especially boys.

Francis and Clare

Book cover: 'Francis and Clare: Saints of Assisi'
Author(s): 
Helen Walker Homan
I've been reading a number of the Vision Books aloud to my five year old daughter and she seems to like each one more than the last. The story of Saint Francis is both uplifting and enjoyable, due to the many humorous events captured in the story. The book is also informative enough to be interesting to older children and even adults (I had never read a full-length book about St. Francis).

Saints of the Church

Book cover: 'Saints of the Church'
Author(s): 
Michael G. Allen
This book is a companion to the Vision series of saint's biographies (also published by Ignatius Press). It is a wonderful help to extending the biographies into a full-blown unit study, if you wish, or just to help enrich the reading. For each of the 17 books covered in Saints of the Church , the author includes:

Joan of Arc

Book cover: 'Joan of Arc'
Author(s): 
Mark Twain
Saint Joan of Arc is one of the most astonishing saints of all time. Prayerful, as all saints must be, humble, generous, and patient, Joan served God by leading the armies of France to boot the English from their soil in 1431. Not a usual task for a girl in her late teens, saint or not. And afterwards, to make it perfectly clear that the English were engaged in an act of godless aggression, Joan was burned as a witch after a trial that was unjust, illegal and cruel in every detail.

Blessed Miguel Pro

Book cover: 'Blessed Miguel Pro: 20th Century Martyr'
Author(s): 
Ann Ball
Miguel Pro (1891-1927) was a young priest in Mexico during the persecution of the Church in the 1920s. He used interesting disguises to slip past authorities in order to celebrate Mass in secret and otherwise minister to his people. He fearlessly continued such dangerous missions despite health problems and eventually was arrested and martyred for his faith.The reader will learn a lot about the politics, culture and religion of his time.

Pages