Inspire Children With Heroes and Heroines from Liguori’s Saints and Me! Series by Barbara Yoffie
Each New Year, people make resolutions to help them lead better lives. This year, make a resolution to help children understand and appreciate our saints’ feast days with Barbara Yoffie’s Saints and Me! series from Liguori.
To make it easy to follow along with the saints throughout the year, Yoffie includes the saint’s feast day on the first page of each of her books.
Liguori author Denise Bossert says that she uses Saints and Me! as inspiration for her children and grandchildren throughout the year.
“I set up a kid-friendly prayer space in the family room for my children and grandchildren. I try to put something to read on the prayer table that is timely for where we are in the liturgical year,” said Bossert.
“The next one that I’ll put there is John Bosco: Champion for Youth because his Feast Day is January 31.”
Yoffie's forty years of experience as a teacher and CRE inspired her to write this series including a book about Elizabeth Ann Seton: Mother of Many, who was the patron saint of Catholic schools.
“I noticed that many of my Confirmation students would select the same saints over and over again. I started to give them more information and helped them research saints. I realized that we needed to do was introduce the children to saints in kindergarten,” said Yoffie.
Each story of an inspiring saint helps early readers understand these heroes and heroines to be champions for the Catholic faith.
“I enjoy sharing my love for the saints with young children. The saints did heroic things for God and the church, but they also lived simply and humbly,” said Yoffie.
Written in plain language, these books help children gain an interest in the saints early in their lives.
“The stories are simple and easy to understand and that the illustrations by Jeff Albrecht are colorful and lively. The stories are authentic to each saint and age-appropriate details are given. When they get older, they can add other information to the saint’s story based on their maturity level,” said Yoffie.
The series includes four sets of Saints and Me! books—Saints of Christmas, Saints of North America, Saints for Communities and Saints for Families—with a new set on its way, Saints of the Sacraments. Each set has an activity book to reinforce the stories in each biography with fun word games, activities and coloring pages.
“My saint stories have become my passion. After I read and study countless sources of information, books, videos, Internet...I pull together an amazing life story of a heavenly hero. I pray, and they help me ‘write’ the story they want to be told. In the process I have made many new saintly friends,” said Yoffie.
