Wednesday, July 22

The Life of Saint Brigid: Abbess of Kildare...

A few days ago, I received a copy of The Life of Saint Brigid: Abbess of Kildare by Jane G. Meyer to review. I am embarrassed to admit I knew nothing of Saint Brigid's life until I read the book. When the package arrived, I ripped it open and devoured the book right then and there (the children were napping or else I would have read it to them, too!). I loved reading about this saint and am so glad to know more about her!

One of the best things about this book is the content. Though the book is written in easy to understand prose, it is chock full of wonderful information about the saint. The book is clearly meant for children, but I believe that this is a book that every adult should own as well.

The illustrations for The Life of Saint Brigid are beautiful Celtic style paintings. I thought that it added so much to have the traditional style of artwork used to depict scenes from Saint Brigid's life. I really liked the icons that the illustrator, Zachary Lynch, painted alongside the Celtic knot work designs and illustrations of the saint's life throughout the book.

This children's book was written for little ones aged four and up. Our eldest child is three and while this book went a bit over her head, she did get something from it. She loved the part of the book that discussed Saint Brigid's pantry being blessed by God so that she could give food away to the poor. In addition, she was quite interested in the concept of becoming a nun - something I genuinely thought was beyond her comprehension. She was very drawn to one of the illustrations of Saint Brigid after she had become a nun and was dressed in white (I think because it reminded her of an icon we have of Saint Elisabeth the New Martyr).

A hard concept for Sugar Plum to understand was the fact that many of the illustrations showed the people and animals with expressions that she described as "sad" or "angry." The style of Celtic art is to use teardrop shaped eyes which often create that sad or angry look in the pictures. I believe that this was tricky for our daughter to understand because she often uses the pictures to help her understand what is going on in the story and the way things looked didn't mesh with the words that I was reading to her. I truly feel that we had difficulty with this because Sugar Plum is only three and the book is meant for slightly older children who would be better able to understand the differences in artistic style.

I really loved this book and am so happy that we have a copy for our collection of Orthodox children's books! I am very thankful that I now know about this wonderful saint and plan on finding an icon of her to hang in our kitchen next to one of Saint Euphrosynos the Cook. The life of Saint Brigid offers so much encouragement to us all! I hope that you will read and enjoy this book as much as we did!

7 comments:

Bethany Hudson said...

Emma, thank you so much for reviewing this book! I hadn't heard about it before, but I love St. Brigid (I'm part-Irish, and she is one of the saints honored in our home), and am always looking for child-friendly books and projects to share the saints with my kids.

Mimi said...

I also love St. Brigid, and agree, it is lovely (and I was also blessed to get a copy to review)

As my youngest is 13, I was interested to read how Sugar Plum reacted.

faerieeva said...

Hey Emma,
I just stumbled over this new shop/ designer and thought some of the clothes might appeal to you as well, so I decided to pass on the link:
be loved and blessed,

Eva

http://www.shabbyapple.com/

Jane G Meyer said...

Yay, I'm so glad you were able to meet St. Brigid. She has blessed me greatly, and inspired me in so many ways.
I was so interested in your comment about your three year-old feeling a sadness regarding the artwork. I also have a three year-old and am at the moment creating a little movie about St. Brigid. In it I've included two illustrations of St Brigid from the book. Whenever he sees the movie, which he loves, because pictures of his sister are there, and of him as a baby, and because he loves the music... whenever he comes to the clips of St. Brigid he always comments, "There's the sad girl, mama..."

Part of iconography bears a bit sadness, of sacrifice and often martyrdom. I'm glad he notices this sadness; it will give us many opportunities for discussion as he gets older, and it certainly sets it apart from what one typically sees... Anyway, all very interesting!

Blessings, to you, Emma. May you reflect the light and love that St. Brigid had for Christ and those in her midst!

Anna said...

Loved this book, in fact it has inspired me to use St. Brigid as the patron saint for our Orthodox version of girl scouts with a local co-op!

MamaBirdEmma said...

Thanks for the link, Eva! I love their clothes!

MamaBirdEmma said...

Thanks for the link, Eva! I love their clothes!

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