RAR #190: Sarah’s Favorite Stories About Christian Saints and Heroes

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Hi, Sarah.

 

Holly (00:01):

Hi Sarah, my name is Holly.

 

April (00:03):

Hi Sarah. My name is April I'm in Melbourne, Australia.

 

Speaker 4 (00:07):

I have a question about...

 

Julianne (00:09):

My name's Julianne, and we live in India.

 

Speaker 6 (00:11):

I am wondering-

 

Crystal (00:12):

Hi Sarah, this is Crystal from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Can you give me a suggestion for an especially fabulous book?

 

Sarah Mackenzie (00:23):

Hey, there I'm Sarah Mackenzie. This is the Read-Aloud Revival, and in this short episode, I'm answering one of your questions.

 

Whitney (00:31):

Hey Sarah, this is Whitney. I am fairly new to the homeschooling journey, and I actually came across your book on accident at the library because it looked so interesting, and I picked it up instead of reading it and fell so much in love. Read it really, really fast and then, then I found your podcast.

 

(00:51):

And I confess, probably for the first year and a half I kept hearing about the RAR Premium and thought, oh, my kids are too young for that. I probably won't get anything out of it, but I went ahead and joined it. I thought, you know what? I keep hearing about it and I went ahead and joined it. And I love it so much. I have a first grader and a preschooler and then also a baby, and I get so much out of it. And I just feel more than anything, just so encouraged in my homeschool journey. So first of all, thank you so much for that.

 

(01:22):

My question for you is part of my morning circle time that I'm wanting to bring in is learning about more of Catholic saints or Christian saints and martyrs in a way that is for children. And I remember in one of your podcasts you mentioned some books, but I can't find it anywhere. So do you have any recommendations on books that deal with strong Christian martyrs, saints, or spiritual giants that I can start including into my circle time in the mornings with my littles.

 

Sarah Mackenzie (02:00):

Whitney, thank you so very much for letting us know that you're loving RAR Premium. That's music to my ears. It's my favorite place too. And we hear that a lot, the I was hesitant to join. Then I joined and thought, oh my gosh, why didn't I join sooner? This is amazing. So I'm glad that's been your experience. Any listeners who want to get in on that action as well, that's at rarpremium.com. And depending on when you're listening to this, our prices are about to go up. So if you're hearing this before October 1st, hop on over there and get joined up with us because you're going to love it, just like Whitney, and you want to get in and lock in our lower rate before the prices go up. Once you join, you get that price for as long as you keep your subscription. So it's a great time to lock in the row with lowest rates. That premium will be again.

 

(02:51):

Okay, let's talk about Christian heroes and saints for morning time, stories of Christian heroes and saints. And I'll tell you, I love stories of Christian heroes and saints. I am not a huge fan of really gory ones, and there are a lot of gory stories about saints. So especially when we have a mixed age group, and some kids do just fine with graphic or gory tales, and others, not so much.

 

(03:18):

So I'm going to share some that would be good for a wide range of ages, regardless of sensitivity level. The ones you have probably heard me mention before, Whitney, are the Ethel Pochoki books, and we're going to put these in the show notes. Once Upon a Time Saints, More Once Upon a Time Saints, Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints. I think there might be one called Saints and Heroes.

 

(03:43):

Some of these are... They're all illustrated, I should say, with line drawings, and they're excellent line drawings. Some are done by one of our favorites around here, Ben Hatke. But the stories themselves are just really well written. They're kind of a spin on fairytales meet saint stories, and I love the way they're presented. They're just hands down my favorite saint stories. They're also available as audio books at a really good price. I think they're like $5 a book on Audible. That you don't have to have an Audible subscription, you can just go to Amazon, buy the Audible version of the boat for five bucks. Listen to it on the free audible app This is pretty great. That would be an excellent addition to morning time.

 

(04:28):

Some others that I really love Tomie dePaola, of course. You all know. I love Tomie dePaola so much. My dog's name is Tomie dePawla. Maybe we'll put a picture of him in the show notes, just for kicks.

 

(04:41):

Tomie dePaola has lots and lots of picture books. He wrote and illustrated tons of books. Ignatius Press is bringing several of his religious titles back into print, Bible stories and saint stories, so I think right now they have Brother Francis of Assisi, Queen Esther, Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, Mary, the mother of Jesus. I'm counting off on my fingers. I think those are the ones they have right now.

 

(05:04):

They also have republished some books by Demi like Saint Bernadette and the Miracle of Lourdes, and so those are excellent as well. We'll put links to all this in the show notes because I know now I'm doing that thing where I spout off titles, and it's stressing some of you out, but don't be stressed. We'll collect all these in the show notes for you.

 

(05:21):

A couple of other picture books I really love are done. They're written by Josephine Nobisso, and my favorite of hers is called Take It to the Queen. And that would be good for all my Catholic listeners, as well as she has one called The Weight of a Mass and Francis Woke Up Early. I just saw that she has a new one coming this fall called Portrait of a Son. I haven't seen it. Don't know anything about it, but I absolutely will get my hands on it because I'm a fan of her work.

 

(05:52):

And then a few other picture books about saints that we've liked. There are several that are written by Dessi Jackson, A Tale of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Felix and the Spider, and Nikola and the Monk. I think those ones are all illustrated by Lydia Grace Kadar-Kallen, who by the way, was homeschooled and a lovely artist. And also Saint Clare and Her Cat. That one was also written by Desi Jackson, but it's illustrated by someone else, Martina something, Martina Parnelli.

 

(06:22):

I recently got a new volume of saint stories. I haven't read the entire thing. The stories I've read from it I've really liked. They're written so well. They're illustrated. It's a beautiful book with gold foil on the cover. It's called Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace and Courage. It's written by Carey Wallace and illustrated by Nick Thornborrow.

 

(06:45):

And it's one of the most beautiful saint collections I've seen. Like I said, I haven't read all the saint books. There's quite a few. Let me see how many pages there are in here because I have it right here. Over 200 pages. They're each short stories though, so you could read one saint story in morning time just in a few minutes. I'm not sure how many are in here, but it looks like 50 or something off the top of my head.

 

(07:08):

And like I said, they're really well done. The ones I've read so far are pretty gentle. And I went to some of the saints that I knew had some gruesome ends and read those, so I could see how gruesome they are, and they're not. I mean, they tell what happened to the saint. And some of these saints really did meet some pretty gruesome ends, but they don't go into detail about the gore. They just state what happened at the end. So read a few for yourself to vet it for your kids. Stories of the Saints. This one's really beautiful. This book could probably get you through the whole year too. So if you got this one, you could read a saint story or two a week and be in good stead for a while.

 

(07:46):

Okay, and for anybody out there who wants really good Bible stories and Bible heroes, but not necessarily saint stories, we like to recommend the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago. But even with my older kids, I use the not illustrated version, which is The Story of God's Love for You. Same text as the Jesus Storybook Bible, but it's not illustrated. The audio version is exquisite, really, really well done. The Story of God's Love for You by Sally Lloyd-Jones. Who narrates that? I'm going to look it up right now, David Suchet, or I might be saying his last name wrong. I'm sorry, David. S-U-C-H-E-T. I think Suchet or Suchet. And you can get this on Audible. You could also get on Libro.fm, so if you'd rather not purchase it on Amazon, you can get it from Libro.fm.

 

(08:41):

Which I should just mention to you all at the moment, since I'm sitting here talking about it. I know lots of us are trying to buy our books from other places that support independent bookstores. And so my favorite place to do that right now is bookshop.org. And you'll notice on the website, that we are adding bookshop.org links to all of our book recommendations. It's a rather laborious process, so it's taking us a while, but we are slowly adding bookshop.org links to every book. So you have a recommendation of where to buy your book if you want to support independent bookstores, instead of buying your books on Amazon.

 

(09:14):

And Libro.fm is the audio version of... It's the independent bookstore version of Audible. So Libro.fm is the same price as Audible, the whole thing works the same, but the money goes toward supporting local independent bookstores, which is kind of great.

 

(09:32):

So the Story of God's Love for You, I'd highly, highly, highly recommend for any age kids to listen to during morning time, and it's going to be Bible stories told like you haven't heard them before. And they're really fantastic.

 

(09:46):

Okay, I'm going to stop there because these show notes are going to be really long, and I don't put the books in the show notes for you. Kara does that, and Kara is probably asking me to stop, stop, stop listing books Sarah. I'm going to wrap that up, but thanks so much for your question, Whitney. I hope some of these help you.

 

(10:02):

Now let's listen in and find out what the kids are enjoying lately. Shall we?

 

Catherine (10:10):

I'm [Catherine 00:10:10], and I will be nine years old this week. I'm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and my favorite book is Wingfeather Saga. And my favorite character in Wingfeather Saga is Leeli because she's a lot like me.

 

Obi (10:27):

Hello. My name is [Obi 00:10:30], and I'm six years old. My favorite book is Go Dog, Go, and why I like it because there's a bunch of dogs and they have a party on top of a tree.

 

Michael (10:42):

My name is Michael. I am from Iowa. I am 11 years old, and my favorite book is the Geronimo Stilton and the Kingdom of Fantasy, and my favorite part in the book is where Geronimo gets to ride a dragon.

 

Sarah Mackenzie (11:03):

Thanks for listening. If you've got a question for an upcoming episode, leave me a voicemail at readaloudrevival.com/message. Until next time, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.

 

(11:24):

So many of us feel overwhelmed in our homeschool. There's a lot to do, and it feels like every child needs something a little different. The good news is you are the best person on the planet to help your kids learn and grow, and home is the best place to fall in love with books.

 

(11:50):

I'm Sarah Mackenzie. I'm a homeschooling mother of six, the author of Teaching From Rest and The Read-Aloud Family, and I'm the host here on the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast. This podcast has been downloaded over 8 million times, and you know, I think it's because so many of us want the same things. We want our kids to be readers, to love reading. We want our homes to be warm and happy havens of learning and connection. We know that raising our kids is the most important work of our lives.

 

(12:28):

That's kind of overwhelming, right? You are not alone. In Read-Aloud Revival Premium, we offer Family Book Clubs, a vibrant community and Circle with Sarah, coaching for you, the homeschooling mom. So you can teach from rest, homeschool with confidence, and raise kids love to read.

 

(12:52):

Our Family Book Clubs are a game changer for your kids' relationship with books. We provide you with a Family Book Club Guide and an opportunity for your kids to meet the author or illustrator live on screen. So all you have to do is get the book, read it with your kids, and make those meaningful and lasting connections. They work for all ages, from your youngest kids to your teens.

 

(13:20):

Every month, our community also gathers online for a Circle with Sarah to get ideas and encouragement around creating the homeschooling life you crave. They're the most effective way I know to teach from rest and build a homeschool life you love.

 

(13:43):

We want to help your kids fall in love with books, and we want to help you fall in love with homeschooling. Join us today at rarpremium.com.