Reading Catholic

Reading Catholic and catholic

books for kids

First, What Are You Reading? Volume 16, Christmas Book Edition, December 2011

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Here are my answers to the four questions I ask on the first of each month:
first, what are you reading?
what do you like best about it?
what do you like least?
what’s next on your list to read? 

As always, I hope you’ll consider your current reads on your blog and/or sharing here in the comments or on Facebook.  Happy reading!

Normally, I finish my “first, what are you reading?” post well in advance of the first day of the month, but  this month I did not.  Rather than make it a “second, what are you reading?” post, I’m going to quickly list a couple of Christmas classic books, and invite you to share yours.  No “what I like best, least or next” this time.  You’ll have to fill in for me.  And don’t forget to enter the book giveaway that ends tonight.


First, what are you reading?  


Linda, a fellow library volunteer, shared with me a great book that I read to kids this week in the school library.  It’s called Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto.  It’s a very sweet and funny book, makes you want to make tamales after you finish, and also funny.  A couple of the classes of kids and I worked out the math problems if four kids had to eat the 24 tamales, how many tamales each?  Thanks for introducing it to me, Linda!

We haven’t gotten out any of our Christmas books yet, but two of our absolute favorites are The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy by Jane Thayer (note that we have that actual older edition, given to me several years back by one of my sisters).  It’s fairly goofy, but I pretty much have it memorized after reading it four Christmases ago literally every day from about December 15 to mid-February, so fond was our then four-year-old of that book.  We all still love it.

The other every Christmas must read aloud, though my kids are getting older, is Rumer Godden’s The Story of Holly & Ivy”


.  I see a handsome new edition came out last Christmas, and I might have to invest in that this year.  We have a very old edition of this.

What are the favorite perennial Christmas books at your house?

Thomas Friedman Agrees With Me

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As I’ve said many times here, I’m a firm believer in reading books with and to kids, even once kids can read themselves.  In our family, we particularly love having family books–books that we all read and remember and become part of our family “story.”  

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had a great column over the weekend essentially agreeing with me. (Not that Friedman reads me often, but you know what I mean).    My husband helpfully shared the column with me, and our discussion helped shaped my thoughts here.  I sometimes forget what a great source of both information and analysis he is, so allow me to give him a quick and well-deserved shout-out here.
Friedman refers to an international study that (every 3 years) tests 15-year-olds, and finds that young people whose parents read to them when they were young do much better on reading comprehension and problem-solving than those who do not have that benefit.  The study also shows the more parents are involved in their children’s lives, asking about schoolwork, talking with them about politics and news, in addition to the reading, also raised scores.
Now, I don’t continue to read to our children (all strong readers by now), and we don’t have family favorite “books,” just so that our kids will out-perform their peers when they take tests.  But I do love that giving kids this heritage of great books makes them better able to comprehend the world and be better at problem-solving.  Essentially, Friedman is affirming the Catholic view that parents are the “primary and principal educators” of their children.
I’m beginning work on my December Catholic Post column, about books that would make good Christmas gifts.  As it stands now,  I’m recommending more kids’ books than grown-up books.  I was starting to feel a little concerned about this until I read Friedman’s column.  
What do you think about the study and what it means for parents and kids?  You can read the full results of the international study here. 

First, What are You Reading? Volume 15, November 2011

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Here are my answers to the four questions I ask on the first of each month:

first, what are you reading?

what do you like best about it?

what do you like least?

what’s next on your list to read? 

As always, I hope you’ll consider your current reads on your blog and/or sharing here in the comments or on Facebook.  Happy reading!

First, what are you reading?  

Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith.    Esquith teaches in a troubled Los Angeles school with few success stories, and yet manages to transform the lives of his 5th grade students year after year.

The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles is by Padraic Colum, and illustrated by Willy Pogany.  My 8-year-old son and I are reading this to each other, with other family members listening in from time to time.

What do you like best about them?

Here’s what I loved about Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire:  Esquith writes all about making a great classroom culture and holding kids to a high standard.  He teaches them problem-solving as a key skill, and challenges the students to act right at the highest level of behavior.  He and his students perform an acclaimed Shakespeare play every year.  He takes his students on trips to broaden their horizons and shows them classic movies to foster a sense of media literacy—I could go on and on.  He’s a powerhouse, and his many awards are well-deserved.  This would be a great book for any teacher, or really any parent, to get great ideas (or be confirmed in your own) for enriching the lives of children.

Padraid Colum was an Irish writer.  I’m not sure where I picked up the handsome Aladdin paperback of The Children’s Homer, but once I started reading it with my 8-year-old son, we were hooked.  Other than various adaptations over the years, I’ve never been good at reading The Odyssey and other classic Greek literature.  I downloaded an Odyssey App once, but found the language less than friendly to my style.  Colum’s language, while a little old-fashioned, hooked us quickly and we love the amazingly great stories.  After we finished The Children’s Homer, we started on The Golden Fleece.  Colum won the Newberry award for The Children’s Homer, The Golden Fleeceand The Children of Odin.

What do you like least about them?

A big deficit of Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire is the amount of stuff Esquith is able to accomplish with his kids, and how someone reading it might feel inadequate.  It reminds me of when we used to educate our children at home—a danger could be visiting the blogs of other moms who seemed to be able to “do it all,” and how that kind of information was depressing instead of challenging.

Esquith is an amazing teacher, but in a way it’s more of a vocation.  It doesn’t appear he has children; his wife is very involved in helping his classroom succeed.  His kind of dedication and single-minded pursuit of great teaching isn’t realistic for most people, with families and other responsibilities.

I don’t necessarily think that a teacher, whether in public, private or homeschooling, should attempt to replicate, even over the course of a lifetime, Esquith’s successes.  However, there are so many great take-away points that it’s a very helpful read.

I don’t really care for the Willy Pogany illustrations in The Golden Fleece and other Colum books.  They are not terrible, just not my style.  Otherwise, these Colum/Pogany books are all good.

What’s next on your list to read?

I am reading many, many books that would be good as gifts for my December column.

So, what are you reading these days?  Any books you would like to share?

Helping Children Make Sense of 9/11, 10 Years Later

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The primary book that I reviewed this month was a children’s book about the events of 9/11, He Said Yes:  The Story of Father Mychal Judge, by author Kelly Ann Lynch.   It wasn’t entirely intentional to focus on a children’s book, but as I argue, sometimes “just a kid’s book” can be more insightful and meaningful than books for adults.

Earlier today, I listened to a radio interview with a American studies professor discussing the “art of 9/11,” focusing exclusively on novels, movies and songs for adults that have come out of the tragedy, and their meaning, and how they have helped us heal (or not) after 9/11.  It was a fascinating interview; yet I found myself thinking about how much more do children need help in processing and understanding difficult events like what happened on 9/11.
I am a volunteer in the library of our children’s grade school, and I’m fortunate to get the chance to read to the students.  Earlier this week, I read through He Said Yes with different grades of kids, and we talked about what happened that day.  This book ended up being a great way for kids who were unaware of 9/11 to learn about it gently, as 9/11 images are all over the news, and the students are bound to be confronted with it.  Learning about the heroism of Father Judge and others will give, I hope, some framework for understanding beyond the images.
Some of the kids asked me, “Is that a true story?” so we talked about how Father Judge is the listed as the first official fatality on that day.  I was surprised that every single time I read it, I choked up on the last pages of the book, when author Lynch quotes John 15:13, “When Father Mychal ran to the towers, he was following in the footsteps of Jesus, who told his disciples, “No one has grater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Here are several other children’s books to help children to learn about and understand 9/11 as we remember 10 years later:
The Little Chapel That Stood by A.B. Curtis is a beautifully illustrated and lyrical poem-book about Old St. Paul’s Church, which survived the attacks at Ground Zero, and became a place of refuge for firefighters and others.
If you can, reading an actual copy of The Little Chapel That Stood makes for great reading with small children; the book itself is handsome and a nice size.  Unfortunately, it looks like it is difficult to order quickly; for instance, I see Amazon lists it as a one- to three-month delivery time.  Fortunately, I discovered an online version of the story on the author’s website.  Do read it, and be prepared to choke up a little if you do read it out loud, when you read many lines, especially about how the firefighters hung up their shoes on the fence of the church: “Oh what gallant men we did lose, who never came back to get their shoes!”
[The interesting Catholic trivia connection to Old St. Paul’s, an Episcopal Church, is that St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born canonized saint, was married to her husband, William Seton, in St. Paul’s, on January 25, 1774.]
Also, blog commenter Marie jogged my memory about The Little Chapel That Stood, that I hadn’t picked up in years. Thanks, Marie!
Fireboat:  The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey by Maira Kalman, is another great book about the great and small heroism around 9/11.  This book, too, shows how ordinary people worked to stop the fires at the Twin Towers with a previously retired and restored 1930s-era fireboat.  The illustrations are a kind of modern folk-art, and the text is delightful in conveying such difficult themes.
Do you know of any other 9/11 books for children?  How are you discussing 9/11 with your children?

Remembering 9/11

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It’s been 10 years since 9/11, but I can still recall exactly where I was and every tiny detail of how I learned what had happened. It was an almost too-sunny Tuesday morning as I drove over the McCluggage Bridge on my way to a Scripture study.  Our two little daughters were in their carseats, sweetly singing along with a CD about the three little kittens who lost their mittens….  Then one of my sisters called my cell phone to tell me about the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, where her husband worked at that time, and life changed for everyone.
That kind of total recall is probably true of most Catholic Post readers, but what do we do with those memories?  As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the attacks, remembrance is not just important, but healthy, especially when we do so prayerfully in light of our Catholic faith.

He Said Yes:  The Story of Father Mychal Judge
In his writings and talks, Pope Benedict XVI returns again and again to the theme of saying “yes” to God.  The Holy Father ended one of his addresses to World Youth Day pilgrims in Madrid by saying, “(L)et us pray that, like (the Blessed Mother), our “Yes” to Christ today may also be an unconditional “Yes” to his friendship, both at the end of this day and throughout our entire lives.”
Saying yes to a life of faith is not a one-time event, but a daily, often moment-by-moment, decision.  This is captured beautifully in the children’s picture book, He Said Yes:  The Story of Father Mychal Judge by Kelly Ann Lynch. 
Father Mychal Judge was the NYC fire department chaplain, and is listed as the first official casualty of 9/11 at Ground Zero.  The photo of his body being carried out of the North Tower by NYFD members remains one of the iconic images of the destruction that day.
In the years after Father Mychal’s death, there have been several well-written biographies written about him. These books recount how Father Mychal prevailed through numerous obstacles–such as family dysfunction and his own alcoholism–to be and to bring Christ to so many hurting people.
Yet in its simplicity, He Said Yes captures the central message of Father Mychal’s life more successfully.  The picture book does this by distilling Father Mychal’s essential work: how he continued to say yes to Christ, to his vocation, and to the people he served, until the very end.  A bonus is that proceeds from the book He Said Yes benefit Mychal’s Message, a non-profit started by author Lynch to help the homeless and poor.
Franciscan Voices on 9/11

Franciscan Voices On 9/11 by St. Anthony Messenger Press, is a collection of reflections on the attack and its meaning 10 years later.    Since St. Francis was known so much for his emphasis on peace and reconciliation, having a Franciscan perspective to mark the decade is enriching.
Essays range from the deeply personal, such as “Looking Back, Moving Forward”–  those whose lives have been dramatically changed after 9/11; to several political analyses; to a beautiful essay, “Prayer Out of Pain,” by Franciscan Scripture scholar Michael Guinan, who uses Lamentations as a way to help people respond to the memory of 9/11.
Easily the most interesting and informative section is “Franciscans and Muslims:  Eight Centuries of Seeking God,” by Franciscans Jack Wintz and Pat McCloskey.  Here is history about St. Francis’ trip to the Holy Land in 1219 to preach the gospel to the Sultan (the Muslim leader) during the time of the Crusades, and how Franciscans still maintain a considerable presence there to this day.   
As Wintz and McCloskey recount, because St. Francis approached in peace and love, and disregarded the gifts offered to him, the Sultan showed greater respect for him and did not kill him outright.  St. Francis bravely “proclaimed the triune God and Jesus Christ, with steadfastness, courage and spirit,” and the Sultan told him, “Pray to God for me, that God may reveal to me the law and the faith that is more pleasing to him.”  Franciscans still serve in the Holy Land as guardians of many shrines.
Franciscan Voices on 9/11 is available in only as a Kindle book, which can be read on a wide variety of devices.

Q&A with Colleen Swaim, author of Ablaze: Stories of Daring Teen Saints

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Following is my interview with Ablaze author Colleen Swaim (you can read my review of Ablaze here).  I was delighted to get the opportunity to find out more about her book and writing, and I sincerely hope to read more books in the future from this engaging young author.  In the meantime, I’ll be keeping her and her husband Matt in prayer as they expect their first child later this year.

First of all, well done on Ablaze. All the readers in our family found this book super engaging. I had trouble getting it back from my 13-year-old so I could write a review of it. Did you plan for it to be so widely enjoyed by a variety of ages, or were you primarily writing for teens?

A. The primary intended audience is indeed teenagers, but I chose the saints with a view toward capturing the sense of adventure that sanctity entails, and I believe that that is something that is appealing to people of all ages who seek Truth. I myself am 29, and I chose saints who first caught my own interest.

Q. What gave you the idea for the book?

A. Liguori Publications approached me with the idea for a book on saints for teenagers, and from there we came up collaboratively with the theme of teenagers who pushed the boundaries and radically lived for Christ, even if their own cultural milieu was working against their best intentions. Liguori and I both were very much looking to incorporate interactive elements that would take print material to the next level, and I believe that was achieved through building in the references to Sacred Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as well as applicable prayers and reflection questions

Q. You’re a high school teacher. Other than this book, how do you challenge students immersed in the popular culture to pause and really take a look at these saints and their lives?

A. From my perspective, the most difficult part of that challenge is the call to pause – silence and reflection are difficult to come by for anyone, adults included, so the most impacting thing that I can do is to model deliberate contemplation. Sometimes that is through recalling powerful experiences I’ve had while on silent retreat, while other times it’s discussing slower forms of entertainment, such as book reading, as cogitating a passage or collection of passages can be very difficult if it is broken up by intervals of multi-sensory stimulation, such as video gaming or tweeting. If they can take some quiet time, students will quickly realize that even the most contemplative saints lived very active lives beyond their wildest dreams.

Q. I love the cover design and the design elements throughout the book. Did you have a hand in that?

A. I really cannot take any credit for the illustrations, although I agree that Liguori’s team did an amazing job! It really communicated to me that they are very in touch with the book’s audience, as its graphic appeal is relatable to both male and female adolescents. They even had temporary tattoos made up of the front cover art, which have been a big hit.

Q. How did you discover the saints you write about? Some are relatively well-known, but some are less popular and yet deserve a hearing.

A. Researching for the book was one of the best parts of the experience. My goal throughout the process was to seek out saints of both genders who are representative of the worldwide vitality of Catholic youth lived to incredible heights. With some saints and blesseds, that meant scouring Vatican resources for newly recognized individuals, while others fell into my lap through the recommendation of a friend of a friend. I tried to include both classics and those who I felt Americans need an introduction to, and I believe the book succeeded on those fronts.

Q. Who is your favorite saint from the book, and why?


A. I very much enjoyed learning about the life of Chiara Luce Badano, as she was beatified right in the midst of my writing the book, in September 2010, so I got to watch her beatification live on television and really get a better sense of the excitement felt by those close to her cause. She died in the 1990’s so she really is an individual contemporary teenagers can relate to on a variety of levels.

Q. How did you get the idea for the “saintly challenges,” such as the recipes, prayers and other challenges for readers to implement?


A. Some of the more unique aspects of the book, those came to me as I examined each saint more closely in an attempt to help the readers come to a deeper appreciation of the saint through concrete activities. I wanted to have an answer to the inevitable question of “Now what?” that can crop up after one has heard a particularly powerful story. The challenges are meant to be an answer to that question through encouraging the reader to delve deeper into the saints’ struggles, motivations, and methods of seeking aid.

Q. I wrote in my review of Ablaze that my only critique of the book is that I wish you covered more saints. Were there any saints you wish you could have included, and why?


A. The most difficult aspect of the project was paring down the list of prospective saints and blesseds! It was whittled down by considering which saints’ stories we as a Church know enough about to dedicate a chapter-long section and interactive selections to, as well as American Catholics’ current familiarity with the individual and his or her region of origin.

Q. On the same topic: Do you have plans for Ablaze 2? Any other projects you are working on?


A. I would very much enjoy creating a follow-up to Ablaze that would feature more of the saints I wasn’t able to include in the current edition, because as you pointed out, there are many more stories to tell. My husband and I are currently expecting our first child, so that is the ultimate project which we are looking forward to. That being said, I had an excellent experience working with Liguori Publications on ‘Ablaze’, and so would welcome any future projects with them.