We have enjoyed using this manual in our home for almost a year now and have found that it has added a dimension that was lacking from our homeschool before. The author, a member of the congregation Sisters of Saint Joseph the Worker, has done an outstanding job organizing the saints of the Americas by chronology and geographical area. This manual includes saints from both North and South America. Sister Elizabeth Ann begins her book with reasons for studying these saints along with many ideas for incorporating them into ones ongoing historical or geographical studies. She includes information about the various religious orders and information on "How Saints are Made." Her excellent timeline includes key events and people in the history of the Americas with an astric noting where the saints fit into the overall picture. We have found this timeline to be invaluable. Outline maps, which are provided for each area, are easy for the children to trace and the biographies are long enough to provide important information but short enough that they could easily be woven into any history program. The workbook pages and activity sheets at the back of the book allow the student to spend extra time considering the saint's life and how they impacted history.

This is an interesting and helpful book of lists designed for parents and teachers interested in collecting Catholic stories (particularly saint stories) for their children and incorporating them into their school studies. The first part of the book consists of listings of Catholic book series (both in and out of print), including titles with Catholic content that have been awarded the Caldecott Award and the Newbery Award, Catholic Readers, the Clarion Series, the Vision Series, American Background Books, Catholic Treasury Books and much more. The main portion of the book (over 100 pages) includes historical and geographical charts of these books of interest (including separate listings for individual stories in the story collections). These charts provide information on where and when the story took place, what series it belongs to, whether it's in print or not and a general age recommendation. Also included are extensive listings of Catholic authors and publishers of interest. The appendix includes a helpful and detailed guide to collecting and caring for books. I found this to be a very useful and well-organized book and I'm sure it's one I'll turn to again and again - particularly when doing school planning over the summer.

This book is a companion to the Vision series of saint's biographies (also published by Ignatius Press). It is a wonderful help to extending the biographies into a full-blown unit study, if you wish, or just to help enrich the reading. For each of the 17 books covered in Saints of the Church , the author includes:

• an overview of the book
• vocabulary lists broken out by chapter
• quotations from the books called "Language in Context" that develop comprehension and illustrate various literary devices
• Time Line information
• Outline Map information
• Numerous topics for written reports on various levels
• Biographical sketches of other famous people in the book
• "Turning to Scripture and Catechism" which requires looking up various verses or topics in the Bible and the Catechism; this is done to "make connections between the saint's life and the living tradition of the Catholic Church."
• Discussion questions

This is a wonderful, well-organized, and thorough guide to really getting the most out of the Vision books...likely just the kind of thing we would do on our own if we had the time.