Brother Lorenzos Pretzels

Cornelia Bilinsky, author of Patrick and the Fire, The Queen and the Cross, and The Saint who Fought the Dragon: The Story of St. George brings a new story to children ages four to seven: the story of Brother Lorenzo and how he happened upon a simple teaching tool in his monastery kitchen. This beautifully illustrated book will help pass on an important aspect of faith to children through an entertaining story that offers readers likeable and relatable characters.

Brother Giovanni is a happy man and the best baker his monastery has ever seen, but when he is tasked with preparing the children for the Bishop's visit, he has no luck until he twists some bread dough into a special shape, sprinkles it with salt, and offers it as a reward for learning prayers.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life. Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation. This novel is often presented as an example of American naturalism where the behavior and experience of characters are constrained by “nature”—both their own heredity nature, and the broader social environment. McTeague was published in 1899 as the first of Norris’s major novels.

Sweet-smelling basil marks the spot in this treasure hunt led by a queenly saint--join her as she treks to Jerusalem in search of the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ In this fabulous and instructive blend of tale and history, boys and girls alike will be captivated by Helen, an adventurous empress on a mission. Offering faith-based reading in an entertaining format of dialogue and narration, children are encouraged to treasure the Holy Cross in their "own" lives.

"Warm, witty, imaginative. . . . This is a rich and winning book."-The New Yorker.The autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of America's most captivating and important authors, Dust Tracks on a Road, is daring, heartbreaking, and humorous. Hurston's dramatic Southern books, such as Jonah's Gourd Vine and, most famously, Their Eyes Were Watching God, continue to captivate readers with their lyrical beauty, piercing detail, and compelling emotionality. Dust Tracks on a Road was first published in 1942 and tells Hurston's personal narrative in her own words.

Siblings Hannah, Caleb, and Noah, aged six through ten, travel through time and space to Bethlehem, where they meet a family of shepherds who visited the Nativity thirty years before.

An engaging picture book for children ages 4 to 7 about the miraculous staircase built for the Sisters of Loretto in Santa Fe, New Mexico, through the intercession of Saint Joseph.