New Picture Book Introduces Children to Vocations

Taryn DeLong reviews Look and Learn: Vocations, a new book by Casey Pawelek that introduces children to the priesthood, religious life, marriage, and the single life. 

Look and Learn: Vocations

By Casey Pawelek

Published by Paraclete Press

Recently, my daughters discovered that if they turn a laundry basket upside down, it looks like a cage. They put a “mouse” (my older daughter) inside it to make it a mouse trap. Then, a stuffed lion took his turn as the laundry basket became a zoo. One morning, I found our plush St. Thérèse doll inside the upside-down laundry basket. I told my girls that the laundry basket was a Carmelite convent, and the sides were the grille.

I studied education in college and loved lesson planning. But it’s mornings like this one that have taught me over the first five years of my motherhood that you can’t always plan the best lessons. What’s more important is being ready when they happen.

Looking at and Learning About Vocations

Three years after Look and Learn: Words for Catholic Kids, Casey Pawelek is back with another engaging, straightforward, but profound book introducing Catholic kids to an important concept. In this case, it’s vocations: priesthood, religious life, marriage, and the single life.

Look and Learn: Vocations introduces children to the different paths in a Catholic life. It includes an illustration of Carmelites behind a grille (the screen or grating separating cloistered nuns from visitors), so I was able to show my daughters what a non-laundry-basket grille looks like.

Other illustrations include pictures of married couples, priests, and single adults. The section on religious life introduces several different orders, including my daughters’ and my favorite, the Carmelites. It also shares that some religious orders, including the Carmelites, include laypeople as well as priests and religious brothers and sisters.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

When this article is published, my older daughter will be five. She’s still so young, but she’s already being asked what she wants to be when she grows up. (As of this writing, the answer is ballerina — but who knows what she’ll say next?)

We don’t live near a convent, so it’s up to my husband and me to make sure our daughters know about the vocation to religious life. Otherwise, they may not hear the Lord’s voice if He calls them there. Books like Look and Learn Vocations are an important resource for families who want their children to know about all of the different Christian vocations.

“There is no need to worry if you don’t know what you’re called to do yet,” Pawelek writes, “and don’t be afraid of what [God] might ask you to do. God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle, and He gives you the talents and desires you will need to live out His plan.”

The best lesson I can teach my daughters is to listen for God’s voice and obey His call. I’m grateful to Pawelek for the part she plays in educating Catholic children on what that call might look like.

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Copyright 2026 Taryn DeLong
Images: copyright 2026 Paraclete Press, all rights reserved.