We sometimes think of teenagers as immature, selfish and lacking in objectivity. Sean Covey believes they can learn to be otherwise. Using humorous story lines and a heavy sprinkling of anecdotes Covey has set forth a series of steps leading teens toward a more mature and compassionate view of life. While this is a secular book, it is written from a Christian perspective and "the Golden Rule" underlies most of the content.

I was introduced to the series as a high school freshman. I enjoyed the text very much at that time (even though I was working with a photocopy). I was equally impressed with the Sophomore text when I taught with it nearly ten years later.

The first book, Our Goal and Our Guides, focuses on understanding our goal in life – attaining Heaven – and spiritual and doctrinal issues that are related to that goal (such as the roles of faith and reason, the liturgical year, the Blessed Trinity, the Fall, and Salvation through Christ).

The sequel to Surprised by Truth provides even more stories of how the grace of God, the witness of others and important conversations about the truth, brought these men and women back to the fullness of the Cahtolic faith.

These are relatively short (usually about 20 or 30 pages each) autobiographical essays from Catholic converts. The stories cover a numer of converts who are becoming well-known for their vibrant Catholic ministries of various sorts, and so you may have heard the names Marcus Grodi, James Akin, Steve Wood, Tim Staples and Dave Armstrong before).