Book Reviews

The Vikings

by: Elizabeth Janeway             This was a pretty good book.  I read it aloud to my 4th grader for his history and I think we both considered it time well spent.  Probably me more than he but only because he’s a young boy who would rather be up to his armpits in...

Confessions (F.J. Sheed translation)

by Saint Augustine of Hippo             I’ve tried a couple of translations of this book over the years and I’m not sure if I’m just in a place where my mind was finally ready for this book or if it was Sheed’s translation, but I really clicked with this book.  I’ve...

Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls

by Dr. John Bergsma I got this for Christmas. It was as great as I hoped it would be.Doctor Bergsma is an Old Testament and Dead Sea Scrolls specialist and a teacher at Franciscan University. You can tell how fascinating and exciting he finds all this and his...

Fearing the Stigmata

by Matt Weber It does seem that really young people and really old people have a good handle on their faith/life whereas those of us in the middle are still working on how to Catholic in our post-Christian culture.This book was about one man’s story of searching for...
The Whipping Boy

The Whipping Boy

by Sid Fleischman  When buying books for the next school year, there was a Sid Fleischman book on the list that I...

The Black Arrow

The Black Arrow

by Robert Louis Stevenson             The novel opens with the murder of a man by a black arrow.  A letter is later...

The Door in the Wall

The Door in the Wall

by Marguerite De Angelo             This was a very readable book about a young boy named Robin who was the son of a nobleman.  His father was off at war and Robin, at the ripe old age of 10, was to...

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Saint Dominic and the Rosary 

Saint Dominic and the Rosary 

by Catherine Beebe             This was a great biography.  It read well and was really helped along by the fact that Saint Dominic had a very fascinating life.  He was born to older parents after his other brothers and sisters were grown-up and moved out.  He knew he...

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To Know Christ Jesus

To Know Christ Jesus

by FJ Sheed             I read this book for Lent.  It was a nearly perfect Lent book.  It even had 45  chapters so you could read one per day and be finished by Holy Week....

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Francis and Clare

Francis and Clare

by Helen Walker Homan             This was an engaging biography on Saint Francis, though not so much on Saint Clare – she kind of pops up at the beginning of the book for a minute and then again at the end.  Saint Francis, whose father was a successful merchant, came...

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Adam of the Road

Adam of the Road

by Elizabeth Janet Gray             In 13th century England,  Adam, the son of Roger the minstrel, is ready to live life on the road with his father so that one day, he too can become a...

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The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett What an excellent book!  A bossy, spoiled girl named Mary is living in India until she is sent to Yorkshire England to live with her very rich uncle in his mansion when her parents die in an epidemic.  The whole place...

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Away Goes Sally

Away Goes Sally

by Elizabeth Coatsworth             Sally is a young orphan that lives with her aunts and uncle in late 18th-century Massachusetts.  After receiving a letter from their cousin that had settled in...

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Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

by GK Chesterton             This was a near perfect biography.  If I were Charles Dickens, I would have been waiting for Chesterton at the gates of heaven to hug the stuffing out of him for writing...

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The Magna Charta 

The Magna Charta 

by James Daugherty             This was a well-written book especially considering that with the material it covered, it could have been a snoozefest.  Instead, the story of the Magna Charta was...

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