This simple workbook provides practice for preschool and kindergarten aged children in writing numbers, counting objects and considering religious ideas associated with each number (one God, two natures: human and divine, three Divine Persons, four marks of the Church: One - Holy - Catholic - Apostolic, five Sacred Wounds, etc.). There are three pages each for the numbers one through ten which contain writing lines for handwriting practice of the numbers, related black and white illustrations to color, pictures to circle and count, etc. The remaining pages provide practice in counting sets of things ("circle the correct number" for several pages and "write the correct number" for others). The final eight pages offer simple exercises involving numerical order, more and less, some very basic addition and simple shapes. The pages would have to be read aloud to young children.

The Parent's Guide offers steps to prepare your child to read by using the enclosed flashcards (printed on card stock) to gain letter and sound recognition and then proceeding to work on pre-reading blends (with the pre-reading sound blend sheets that are included in the program and printed on card stock). After these steps are accomplished, the child will be ready to proceed to the phonics readers. The parent's guide also offers discussion questions to help your child get more out of each story.

There are four sets of readers, each set being identified by its own color. The booklets and flash cards come as an 8 1/2 x 11 pad. Each booklet starts out as a regular-sized piece of paper which you fold into four to form a child-sized booklet.

Level 1 contains 15 booklets. The story titles are: "At Mass", "Stop! Hot Pot!", "Sad Nip", "Mud on the Rug", "The Hot Pup", "Mom Gets Help", "The Rat", "Little Ann", "Bat the Ball", "Funny Ann", "The Campers", "God With Us", and "Messy Room".

This set starts with simple words such as "pat" and "sat" and progresses slowly to more complex words like "tent", "small" and "under".

Level 2 contains 10 booklets. The story titles are: "Dad's Cake", "Mrs. May is Sick", "Mike's Bike", "Visit the Sick", "We Hope to See the Pope", "The Little Goat with No Sense", "The Cold Rain", "Feed the Hungry", "The Tease", and "Noon Potluck."

This level starts with words like: "cake" and "taste" and progresses to words like "salad", "baby" and "table".

Level 3 contains 10 booklets. The story titles are: "Ann Cleans the Church", "Blessed Sacrament", "St. Paul", "A Toy for a Boy", "At the Beach", "The Found Rosary", "Run the Race", "School, Where?", "The Quake", and "I Didn't Know".

The starts with words like "kneel" and "holy" and progresses to words like "receive" and "neighbor".

Level 4 contains 10 booklets. The story titles are: "The Bright Star", "The Caught Calf", "Mr. Brown's First Holy Communion", "Kim's Adoption" (in two parts), "In the Match Box", "Badge Fudge", "Squirt", and "Our Lady's Secret".

This level starts with words like: "night" and "follow" and progresses to words like "cheerfully" and "enough".

I found this quite accidentally when browsing the art shelves in the non-fiction children books section at our library system's main branch last week.

Mind you, I am always carting around mountains of books in huge, oversize bags, and I am thankful for strong, teen sons, and for downtown ballet and piano classes allowing me the time to browse at the library.

At the library, I try to throw in the bag only what looks promising, and I still end up bringing home volumes that go directly back into the return bag, almost unopened. So what I post here is truly the cream of the crop-- at least the cream of my own random crop!

Back to Wolfe's marvelous book: she is from the UK and has received awards for her art books for children. I would give her an award as well! (I have just requested the two other titles in this series from Inter Library Loan). I like the paintings she chooses to show her artistic points-- in this volume, the effect of light onto works of art-- and I like the language she uses to talk about them. The book is for children and yet it doesn't talk down or use patronizing language. Art should be talked about simply, clearly-- and she does just that, as she discusses the use of light in different aspects using 18 great works of art as examples. In fact, I am taking this book to take to my art students at co-op on Friday, and my teens at home approve!

The only negative thing I would say is that I would have chosen another of the many art works depicted in the book for the cover. Alas, that may be a very insignificant point, but it is one that could mean a lot to a visual person like me, who had to bet on the stunning art wok inside the book when the cover shows a very boring Picasso.

To close, another positive: Wolfe is not afraid to acknowledge that it is impossible to talk about art without discussing sacred art. Indeed her book opens with the gorgeous Conversion of Saint Paul by Caravaggio (so timely for the Year of Saint Paul!), and it closes with a discussion on "Heavenly Light", using Blessed Fra Angelico's version of Paradise from The Last Judgement.