Saints For Young Readers For Every Day have been an absolute gem for our family! Reading from these books has become part of our daily routine. They present a Saint or Blessed for every day of the year, following the liturgical calendar for the most part. The stories are concise but with enough detail to get a good idea of the saint’s life. At 1-2 pages per saint, they are easy to read each day without taking too long or losing the concentration of the kids. The variety of saints is impressive and inspiring – popes, bishops, priests, religious, lay people, missionaries, farmers, peasants, soldiers, slaves, kings, queens, adults, children – it has been lovely coming to learn a bit about them all and find new saints to pray to for various intentions. Each day’s reading draws out interesting information about each saint, as well as providing ideas of how we can apply something from each saint’s story to our own lives.
There are two books in the series – Volume 1 covers January to June and Volume 2 covers July to December. While the publisher recommends them for ages 9-13, I have been reading these with my now 9 and 6 year olds with the 4 year old listening in for the past 2-3 years and my kids have found them understandable and enjoyable. Depending on the ages of your children, you may wish to slightly “edit” a few stories. For example, the story of St John Bosco mentions how he admonished his school mates when he discovered them with a pornographic magazine. The story of St Charles Lwanga and companions mentions that King Mwanga had been committing sins against purity with his court pages. Other than these, I’ve not noticed any content inappropriate for young children. Sexual sins – such as in the story of St Maria Goretti – are often mentioned as “sins against purity” and any further gory details omitted.
The books do follow the new liturgical calendar, however if you follow the 1962 liturgical calendar, these books would cover quite a lot of the old calendar with adjustments made for differences in dates. If I get around to making a list lining up the saints in this book with the old calendar and filling in the gaps, I will do a post to share it! Or if any of you have done something like this already and are happy to share, please get in touch with us! Also, due to the date they were published, these books do not include more recent saints such as St Mary McKillop or St John Paul II.
Originally posted 2020-04-27 07:00:17.