Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia for Children

The "Catholic Encyclopedia for Children" is a perfect book for teaching children the Catholic Faith. The title "Encyclopedia" might be misleading, however, as this is no dry tome, but a lively storybook perfect for children ages 4-12 (read-aloud for the younger ages, and self-read for the older ones). The majority of the book uses the same pedagogy as the Bible: teach by telling stories. Ms. Ball tells the story of salvation history from Creation all the way through modern times. The first two sections of the book are simply a Children's Bible, retelling all the important stories from the Scriptures, while making sure to highlight the foundations of the Catholic Faith in these stories. The next three sections - "The Church Begins to Grow", "The Church Covers Europe", and "The Church in the New World" - continues the story of God working in the world by relating in interesting stories the work of the Church since the time of the apostles. The final section - "This We Believe" - covers the basics of the Catholic Faith, mostly through the stories of saints who lived that Faith in practice. A nice touch was the presence of a friendly guide (a fish named "Ichthus"), which my younger children especially enjoyed. In fact, they would often call out to me, "Will you please read us the Ichthus book!" My youngest, who is five, asked for me to start over the minute I finished the book, which is the best review I can give. Any book claiming to be an "Encyclopedia" should be comprehensive, and while there are topics that are not covered, this book is a wonderful overview of the story of God's work in the world, through both the people of Israel and the Catholic Church.

Excellent! However, don't buy it along with Ann Ball's First Communion Edition Catholic Bible Stories unless you don't mind overlap with the bible stories.

This wonderful book combines stories from the Old and New Testaments, episodes from Church history, and explanations of doctrines of the faith. Although the target reading level is 9-12, it's a perfect read-aloud book for children as young as pre-school. We just finished reading the stories from Genesis to our four- and seven-year-olds and they comprehended the text with relative ease. Kevin Davidson's watercolor illustrations are very well done and complement Ann Ball and Julianne M. Will's text. For instance, as one reads the story of creation to younger children, it helps to point to all the "creatures" contained in the accompanying pictures. The book also includes lives of the saints, an explanation of the liturgical calendar, a handful of traditional prayers, and a tour of a church. Highly recommended.

This book goes into just the detail that a First Communicant can digest to understand about our faith. Our market is saturated with Old Testament stories for little ones. This book, instead, focuses on Jesus' life and beyond. It even explains the Reformation from a Catholic perspective.

I bought this book for two very different purposes and feel that it is very suitable for each one. It works well in my Catholic school library (K-8) because it covers a range of basic topics, bible stories, sacraments, etc. I also sent it to my son for his small children so that he has a book on hand when they are old enough to need an overview of our faith. The illustrations are attractive and the writing clear and not too difficult.