The recently-posted Recommended Reading List is an excellent compilation of books for adults (and some for children). One of our family’s biggest challenges has been finding suitable read aloud books for younger kids, and I wanted to share a few real treasures that we found almost by accident.

Neumann Press publishes a beautiful set of three classic books by Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson; they’re hard to find on Amazon, but are available directly from Neumann Press either as a set or separately. They can also be found in some more traditional Catholic bookstores. Written about a hundred years ago, they are hardcover, with sewn signatures and gold embossed hardcovers, and are wonderfully illustrated. We keep them on a high shelf, safe from where they might get torn or ripped by little hands. They’re only brought down for bedtime read aloud, and they are among the kids’ favorites. In addition to the illustrations and the traditional texts, what we love about these books is the brilliance of the rhyme and meter; they are head and shoulders above the pedestrian rhyme and tuneless meter of modern childrens books. Even our kids’ non-Catholic cousins are transfixed by the beauty of this verse.

Old Testament Rhymes covers most of the Old Testament, with a page devoted to each of the major events of creation and Jewish history, and concludes by tying everything together and explaining how it all has been pointing toward Jesus Christ. A brief example (read this aloud to get the full effect of the meter): So sin began and trouble too, / For trouble always is / Whenever folk (or I, or you) / Disbelieve God and choose to do / Their will instead of His. / So Cain killed Abel; and the earth, / That GOD had made so fair at birth,  / Was spoiled and made of little worth / By all men’s miseries.

A Child’s Rule of Life is a guidebook for children, and unfolds over the typical day of one family. One series of pages is dedicated to going to confession and Mass, with illustrations of the priest at a high altar, the congregation kneeling at a communion rail, etc. An example of the verse: Then, when the priest lifts up the Host, / I lift my head up too / To worship Jesus Christ the most / And best that I can do. / And then I pray for Pope and King / For holy souls in suffering, / For all my friends and everything, / For Jack and Jane and you.

An Alphabet of Saints gives a sketch of the lives of 26 saints. It can be read straight through, but when we’re running short of time at night, the kids are told that each can “pick three letters,” and then we read just those corresponding saints. An example: J for SAINT JEROME, a learned old Priest, / Who left his own country to live in the East. / One day as he walked in the desert he saw / A lion that limped with a thorn in its paw; / So he pulled out the thorn, and the lion, content / With his doctor and friend, went wherever he went. / The birds loved him too; with the lion and them / He lived in the stable at sweet Bethlehem, / And there where our LORD and His Mother once trod / He translated the Bible that tells us of GOD.

These books are a bit on the expensive side, as many Neumann Press books are, but the production values are very high and we treat these books with special care. I highly recommend them for every family seeking to restore a traditional Catholic culture for their children.