Book reports

In the interest of summer reading (and summer readers), here are some recent Pauline titles that seem worth highlighting:

The Locket's Secret: great for girls! At least this blogging Mama thinks so... (click on the image and you'll find a link where you can sample the first chapter).

For children who need to turn in book reports when school starts up again, our Encounter the Saints series has had a few new additions (editions) this year. These are novelized lives of saints and meet the usual criteria for chapter book--plus there are enough of them in the series to keep kids in reading matter all summer log!

For Dads: Man to Man, Dad to Dad: Catholic Faith and Fatherhood is a great gift for a new father.  The editor (Brian Caulfield, editor of the Knights of Columbus' "Fathers for Good" website) gathered the insights of 12 other dads on issues related to marriage, sexuality, theology of the body (yes!), the meaning of manhood, the role of discipline, the place of sports, the disastrous effect of porn. It really is "man to man."

Read more from the USCCB "For your Marriage" website and on Stuart Dunn's blog (he gives it 5 stars).

He and I is a spiritual classic, now available in a one-volume edition (as well as in e-book). At age 62, this French nurse and playwright began to recognize the voice of Jesus in her heart, and for almost fifteen years she kept a journal of those conversations with the Lord. What is noteworthy about these intimate colloquys is that they were not about noteworthy matters, but about the most ordinary aspects of Gabrielle's life and experience. (One passage I read 20 years ago that still has an impact on me concerned grace before meals.) You can find some reviews of the older edition on GoodReads as well as on Amazon.com (where a number of the reviewers say something to the effect of "life-changing").

Coming SOON (not soon enough for summer reading, but you can order now and get a special discount), is a new series for young readers, Gospel Time Trekkers, about three contemporary children transported right into key events in the New Testament. (This series is the labor of love of our Sister Maria Grace.)