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Three time national fiddle champion Bonnie Rideout put together an enchanting collection of songs and poems for children on this CD. She has set traditional poems and nursery rhymes (such as Bobbie Shafto and Wee Willie Winkie) to traditional Scottish tunes and includes familiar songs such as My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be.

The best part of the CD are the pieces of original and traditional music set to the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson and an absolutely ingenious adaption of the Yeats poem, The Fiddler from Dooney.

I cannot praise this CD enough, it is extremely well done. As part of our homeschooling we memorize poetry so my children were in awe of a Robert Louis Stevenson "song." The music is irresistable and we are all singing the songs throughout the day. The intruments used in creating the music on various pieces include the following: fiddle, viola, harp, recorder, bodhran, piano, guitar, tin whistle, ocarina, dulcimer, and if you can believe it, coffee can, tinkertoy can and kazoo.

If you and your children like traditional Irish and Scottish music, this CD would be a great addition to your collection. It can be ordered from any music store or directly from the music company.

I always look forward to the new books published by Neumann Press, and this book was worth waiting for! God In Our House is a collection of essays that were originally published on a weekly basis in a Catholic magazine named America. Because this feature of the magazine was so popular, the editors published this book, which Neumann Press has now republished.

Beginning with the First Sunday of Advent and concluding with the Last Sunday After Pentecost, each essay is based on a passage from the gospel reading of the day. All Sundays and many Holy Days are included, with the same format: the passage is cited and followed by an approximately two-page essay or story. The author, a father of five, often uses examples from the daily life of a busy family to explain the passage. His style is so appealing! As you progress through the year, you come to know his family almost as well as the teachings of the gospels.

Our family has a custom of re-reading the Sunday gospels on Sunday evenings, and we try to read from a Catholic book as well. With a wide age-span amongst our children, it has been difficult to find a book suitable and enjoyable for all. This book fits our Sunday evenings perfectly. The reading for the week would also be profitable if it were read before Sunday, perhaps as a part of Friday's religion class or Saturday's preparation for Sunday. It only takes a few minutes, but the lessons learned through these enjoyable stories will remain. Buy this book in the hardcover edition! You will enjoy it THAT much as you read it year after year.

This book is filled with prayers for children from cover to cover! The premise of author Kelly Renz is that formal prayers are too distant from the language children use everyday. Moving through the liturgical year and reflecting specifically a reading from each daily mass, the prayers have been written in simple language and are of short length--five to seven lines at the most.

God Listens to Our Children may be very be useful in Catholic homeschool both for families that make it to daily mass and those who are not able to do so. In the first case the children will enjoy the opportunity to revisit the daily reading and in the second case they will have an opportunity to reflect on the mass readings. Sundays readings display cycles A, B and C options, while daily readings in ordinary time have both Year I and Year II passages.

The author has given each set of readings a simple theme, such as Trust, or Belief, Mercy, or Hearing God. An index lists all of the prayers' themes in the end, so users can also look for prayers specific to their changing needs. She has also listed one related Catechism passage below each set of daily prayers. The responsorial psalms for each day are also included.

If you are interested in purchasing this book to aid in the praying with your children, you might want to leaf over it beforehand and read a few prayers just to make sure the style is to your liking (I include a sample below). Although I am one to promote teaching children the richness of the formal (and more complex English) prayers of the Church, these simply phrased ones could be welcome and helpful at times.

Another note is on the absence of prayers related to the saints' feastdays. The author did, however, include prayers related to the two major Marian feasts of Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, as well as for All Saints Day. Maybe this would be material for a follow-up book?

Twenty-Fifth Tuesday in Ordinary Time

Pleasing God

Dear Lord, the book of Proverbs tells me a lot about how You see things. You look at each person's heart. May You look at my heart and be pleased. Show me how to make my heart more pleasing to You. Inspire me to read Proverbs and other books in Your bible.

St. Therese of Lisieux is a very popular saint whose life story is easily understood by children. While not full of action and adventure, her life story's simplicity and sweetness are appealing to even the most worldly of children. This lovely picture book, with its carefully chosen vocabulary and sentence structures, is written on a level that will allow a 3rd-grade and up child to read it for himself or herself. The full-page illustrations are attractive, colorful, simple, and modern in style, adding to the story rather than overwhelming it.

God's Little Flower is not so much a biography but an age-appropriate explanation of St. Therese's spirituality. There are no dates or quotations or geography lessons slipped into the text, yet it manages to convey an even more important lesson---that of quiet, loving service to God through our prayers and sufferings.