Once in a while I am fortunate to review a book that is outstanding, and this is one of them! Mother to the Poor tells the story of the great modern saint of our time in a marvelous way: the beautiful illustrations, the quality of the paper, the language--loving, biographical, translated from Korean. It reads like a picture book, but a meaty picture book! Everyone knows about Mother Teresa, but can most people tell where she was born? How was her family life? How did she begin the Missionaries of Charity? This book tells her whole story and readers of all ages will be delighted.

This is an inexpensive, small and thin book with the text and rubrics of the Mass for children. Illustrations show different parts of the mass, both in the pews and in the sanctuary. Rubrics include such explanations as "Here we bow until the words..." and "The Apostle's Creed is said in Canada and in some masses for children". The illustration for the reception of Holy Communion shows a child receiving the host in his hands.

This a reprint of a book that was written about 100 years ago, and yet, when do stories of saints, heroes, chivalry and adventure become old? In the preface, husband and wife Andrew and Lenora Lang explain how legends full of wonderful and sometimes imaginary creatures and events entered the stories of the saints of the Church. The language is very suitable for reading aloud, and the saints come alive from different countries, cultures and centuries.

It may have been the old fashioned cover with all those happy children, or the subtitle, but the fact is, I grabbed a copy of the Penderwicks from the library even though it’s a 2005 copyright: our read-aloud selections are almost never beyond 1950! It took me a while, however, and some research online, before I inserted the CD into the van’s stereo, and not without some trepidation. Needless to say my personal experience with contemporary children’s materials has been… bumpy at best. But this one promised to be different. By the second chapter, we were hooked.