Saints Around the World for Little Ones

Lorelei Savaryn reviews a new collection of stories about the saints, perfect for the newly independent reader in your family.

Saints Around the World

by Meg Hunter-Kilmer; illustrated by Lindsey Sanders
Published by Emmaus Road Books

My seven-year-old daughter received the original edition of Saints Around the World last Christmas. The original book contains short stories that tell the lives of 100 saints. One of her favorite features of that book is the beautiful paintings of each saint, and the painted map of the world that points out where each of the saints in the book lived. She has requested Saints Around the World for a bedtime story many, many times.

An update for young readers

All of this meant that I was incredibly eager to take an early peek at the new Saints Around the World for Little Ones collection. This updated edition contains the nearly all of the saints from the original book, split into six volumes, and written with young readers in mind.

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One of the challenges of the original book was that my daughter often wanted to read the stories, but as a first grader she still needed a grown-up to sit beside her and help her with some of the trickier vocabulary. When I told her about a version of the book that she might be able to read all by herself, her eyes lit up and she checked the mail daily until the books arrived at our home.

Each of the young reader books is divided up by the shining quality of the saints that book features. There are young, adventurous, ordinary, royal and warrior, talented, and unshakable saints.

Beautiful and engaging

Over the course of the next week, my daughter read through each and every story in all six volumes. The books did a great job of engaging her in the stories of the holy people who have come before us. It took something she already loved and made it possible for her to read all by herself. There were one or two tricky words for her in each story, which was developmentally right on the mark.

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I hope that the grown-ups in young people’s lives will help get this book into the hands and homes of our children. Reading about the saints is inspiring and edifying, and Saints Around the World for Little Ones makes the stories of the Saints accessible to early readers in a beautiful, engaging way.

Highly recommended for children ages 5 through 8.

Ask for Saints Around the World for Little Ones at your local Catholic bookseller, or order online from Amazon.com or the publisher, Emmaus Road Publishing.

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Saints Around the World for Little Ones