Time Traveling with the Saints, Beyond the White Fence

A bunch of curious (and sometimes feisty) cousins, a garden gate leading to time travel adventures, and a peacock to guide them - who could ask for a better juvenile fantasy chapter book??  Especially one where kids will learn about saints' stories - and actually feel like they are there!

If your child likes C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, he or she will enjoy Beyond the White Fence. It all starts with a grandmother's backyard and a girl named Katie... 

Katie discovers that the valley behind her grandmother's garden is more mysterious than it seems.  After tumbling into tenth-century England and encountering Saint Edith of Wilton along with her wild animal menagerie, she is helped home, wondering whether her adventure was truly real.  

But after Katie, her cousins, and a neighborhood friend are drawn back in time once again, she realizes her grandmother's garden gate is a portal into faraway worlds, where patron saints are real people making real-life decisions.

Join Katie and her cousins as they mingle with Rachel and Jacob, meet Saint Mary Magdalene up close, trek across the sand with the matriarchs Naomi and Ruth, and have a nail biting adventure with the heroic Saint Katherine of Alexandria. In seeing the richness of the family of God, they glimpse how very much they are a part of it all.

Author Edith M. Humphrey, a grandmother herself (of twenty!) does a great job of storytelling in this new chapter book for 9 -13 year olds (and precocious 8 year olds) from Ancient Faith Publishing.  A former teacher and lecturer of theology (at Pittsburg Theological Seminary), she does an excellent job of bringing Orthodox theological truths and historic saints' stories alive for kids - with excitement, humor, and even some movie references - in a non-preachy or didactic way.  She tackles the topics of marriage and sexuality with the same amount of matter-of-factness as sibling rivalry.

Written in five parts, the last one makes for an especially suspenseful ending - Humphrey's handling of the bravery and martyrdom of Saint Katherine is wonderfully told.  The reader will feel Katie's dread in anticipation of her patron saint's death, but it is reckoned with the power and glory of God in His Saints. It brought me to tears.

Beyond the White Fence is available now from Ancient Faith Publishing.

The Broken Wheel: A Graphic Novel for a November Saint

Ancient Faith Publishing as just released Gabriel Wilson's latest graphic novel, THE BROKEN WHEEL, the Triumph of St. Katherine. 

Gabriel has done an excellent job of adapting the story of the Great and Holy Martyr Katherine (305-313) into a gorgeously illustrated graphic novel for ages 10 and up.  

What a role model we find in this saint, especially for girls! This young heroine loves learning.  A governor's daughter, she is intelligent, brave, and beautiful, but also very confident.  She tells her parents that she will enter into marriage only with someone who has surpassed her in nobility, wealth, beauty, and wisdom.   

With the help of her secretly Christian mother, an elder monk, and a miraculous dream, Katherine does find this Bridegroom, as she ultimately chooses a Prince (of Peace) and puts her trust and hope in Him.

Later, Katherine's city is visited by the emperor Maximian. He comes to Alexandria for a pagan festival and Katherine is horrified that Christians are being burned alive and sacrificed because of their refusal to deny Christ.  She is compelled to speak with the emperor and tell him about the True God, asking him to stop the human sacrifices.

Katherine is cast into the dungeon and is visited by St. Michael the Archangel. After the emperor sends 50 of his most renowned philosophers to debate Katherine, they not only believe in Christ, but bravely face death for their belief. 

Now comes the part of the story that really sounds like it was made for a graphic novel: The Wheel. Katherine, our brave heroine, will not deny Christ and voluntarily walks up to her declared method of cruel torture.  Suddenly, St. Michael appears and blows the dreaded wheel to smithereens! 

Witnessing Katherine's bravery and faith, Maximian's wife also comes to believe, along with the emperor's military commander and 200 soldiers, who are beheaded.

And that's not all...though St. Katherine herself is ultimately is beheaded, angels miraculously transport her body to Mt. Sinai, where it was discovered years later.  To this day, her relics are still on Mt. Sinai, at St. Katherine's Monastery. 

At the end of the book is a historical note, along with several icons and the Troparion and Kontakion to St. Katherine.

From Ancient Faith Publishing:

Young Katherine, born into noble wealth with an insatiable hunger for knowledge, surpasses even her tutors when it comes to learning. But her learning counts for nothing when she meets the only man worthy of her - her heavenly Bridegroom. Trading worldly knowledge for eternal wisdom, Katherine challenges even the emperor himself - and he prepares a cruel invention to break her. Meet this great bride of Christ in the second graphic novel in the Among the Saints series - written to inspire both children and adults.

About the Author: Gabriel Wilson lives near his childhood home in rural Indiana with his wife Emily and their three daughters. Their home is over 100 years old - a true fixer-upper - and the subject of many of his woodworking projects. In his free time, he pursues carpentry and music and enjoys making homemade tacos with his wife and sketching with his daughters. Graphic novels are his favorite form of artwork, and aside from his comics based on the lives of saints, he has other secular novels in the works. His first graphic novel was The Cross and the Stag. (read my review, here)

Blessed first day of Advent (if you're an Orthodox Christian). St. Katherine/Catherine is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on November 24 or 25, depending on the tradition. The Broken Wheel is a nice sized soft cover book, 7 x 10 inches, with 104 pages. It would make a wonderful gift for any Katherine/Catherine in your life.

Celebrating St. Lucy, a Young Woman of Faith!

To be a woman of faith, even when you're just beginning to think of becoming a woman someday, means to reflect the light of Christ so brightly, that people see past your clothes and your friends and your plans. People see not just who you are right now, but who you were meant to be.  It means to grab Jesus so tightly, it's hard for even you to tell where his work stops and yours begins.
-Calee M. Lee, author of Women of Faith

With St. Lucia Day coming up on December 13, I wanted to tell you about a beautiful new picture book that celebrates not only St. Lucia, but twelve other brave women saints as well!

The book is Women of Faith, written by Calee M. Lee and illustrated by Lisa Graves. Each of the saints is featured with her own story, a short prayer and a luminous watercolor portrait.

Calee's sweet introduction at the front of the book about her "friends" from both Orthodox and Catholic traditions is heartwarming. She gives a beautiful explanation about why we call them saints, and she writes directly to her young readers who will want to hear these stories over and over again...

I would like to introduce you to some friends of mine.  As girls, I'm sure they were funny and brave, just like you.  The loved flowers and their families and the chance to play with friends.  As they grew, they learned to be brave and kind and love everyone around them.  From this, we can know them hundreds and hundreds of years after they died

I'm enthralled with the exciting stories and their pairing with Lisa Graves' gorgeous medieval-style paintings.  The book's large 8 and 1/2-by 11-inch format showcases the illustrations perfectly.  

Young girls will be drawn to the portraits of these early Christian women saints and martyrs from around the world (prettier inside and out than any Disney Princesses!), who lived and died so courageously.

Included are St. Genevieve of Paris, St. Brigid of Ireland, St. Hermione, and St. Barbara, to name a few.

Now I'll leave you with a prayer for St. Lucia'a Day:

O Saint Lucy, your faith in God was a light in the world.  Give me that same light in my soul so that I may avoid evil, be brave in performing good works and hate nothing more than the blindness and darkness of evil and sin. Pray to God for me that my eyes will see clearly and that I will use them for God's glory.