A Review of "Eucharistic Saints"

A gorgeous new volume of stories and illustrations from Meredith Hinds and Adalee Hude

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I was over at a friend’s house for a wonderful event, a capstone of the academic year: a live production of a dramatized version of Rumpelstiltskin, written, staged, and performed by our daughters’ little drama club. They’ve been working hard on the play all year and it was such a delight to see the final performance. As the mothers and fathers chatted during brunch afterwards, with paper plates of food before us and toddlers shared around on our laps, I commented on how happy something like this performance always makes me.

“It’s a good world,” I said to my friends, “in which childhood still includes things like this.”

Children can do so much, and can do such good in the world. It is such a shame when we underestimate their energy and abilities! And it is stories, from fairy tales to novels to great poetry and Bible stories, that are so often instrumental in helping children themselves realize what they can do. A childhood rich in books and stories and play (and plays!) is such a gift in terms of healthy development — socially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It cultivates the moral imagination in a way that little else can.

So of course, with all that on our minds on that day, I quickly found myself telling my friends about the book I have to share with you today, a new children’s volume from author

Meredith Hinds

and illustrator Adalee Hude about a particular set of saints: those with a special love of the Eucharist. A number of things have come together to prompt me to share this book, Eucharistic Saints: Twenty Stories of Devotion to Jesus, with you; both the normal “get-a-review-copy-from-the-press” thing and some reflections on particular saints that have been swirling about in my family lately. (The book is, of course, probably of most interest for those families that have a Eucharistic Christian faith, but it’s so beautiful that I would still recommend it for others, as long as you are comfortable exposing your children to these faith traditions.)

The book is large and beautifully-made, with high quality, glossy pages and the deep, rich colors that characterize Adalee’s style as an illustrator. I have been following Adalee’s illustration career for nearly ten years now, and am a great admirer of all of her work; she is by far my favorite currently active illustrator in Christian publishing. Her illustrations in Eucharistic Saints are so very lovely; they are clear and friendly and are beautifully delineated with the kind of contrast and hues that characterize stained glass, although they do not replicate the style of stained glass overall. There is something both regal and familiar about Adalee’s artwork that is fruitfully on display in this volume.

Just as striking is Meredith Hinds’ text, which introduces each of the twenty saints with a brief biographical note and then launches into a historically responsible, dramatized short narrative that grasps the essence of that saint’s devotion in a descriptive anecdote . Often beginning in medias res and proceeding from the point of view of a bystander, these narratives illuminate their subjects from the side, directing our attention only partially toward the saint. In a sense, while we learn about the saint, we find ourselves looking not so much at him or her as looking with the saint toward the object of his or her devotion, our Lord Jesus.

Image courtesy of Meredith’s ‘stack, Still Today.

I found myself telling my friends after the play performance about the book’s pages on Blessed Imelda Lambertini, for example, whose Eucharistic encounter became especially resonant internationally when the age at which Roman Catholic children could customarily receive First Holy Communion was lowered in 1910. (And Blessed Imelda was then made Patroness of First Communicants!) I also recently have been telling my youngest son about another child-Blessed, Blessed Carlo Acutis, whom I was then delighted to find so relatably and realistically profiled in this book. Carlo was an Italian teen who used the internet as a means of honoring God and bringing other teens to Him; when you look at photographs or, indeed, Adalee’s illustration of this boy, you will likely think to yourself, “That could be my boy” or, “Gosh, that’s how I looked in 2005!” He is a messy-haired, headphones-wearing teen in predictable teen clothing.

A saint like this really matters today, not only because children (and adults) need to be reminded that yes, indeed, kids can become saints, but also that holiness and other miracles continue to happen in real-life contemporary settings. Yes, even today, and even with geeky kids who love computers and the like! As you know, I tend toward keeping a tight rein on my own and my children’s use of screens and the internet generally, and so I am grateful to be able to point to my kids to this beautiful story as an example of how the internet and screens are not intrinsically bad: they must just be used thoughtfully and well, rather than within addiction and without reflection.

It’s crucial not to burden our children with black-and-white thinking in prudential matters. The diversity among saints is a very important reminder of this. Good is good and evil is evil and then there’s the whole array of applying true principles prudentially to neutral things like, well, laptop use, through good discernment. (Check out

Kerri Christopher

’s recent posts for more on this!)

It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that my copy of Eucharistic Saints went missing for two weeks after its arrival. My children loved it. It was finally found deep in the belly of the house, where two different children had already devoured it after finding it lying unassumingly on my bed one day (yes, I was strewing it!). They and I enjoyed both the familiar saints in the book, such as Mother Teresa and Catherine of Siena, and the less familiar ones, such as Paschal Baylon and Peter Julian Eymard.

I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy of your own. I’d lend you mine, but I just promised it to another one of the drama club moms. Click the button below to purchase from my Bookshop.org shop (where it is currently cheaper than on Amazon)!

Note: I was not compensated for this review, except for having received a review copy of the book.

Your turn:

• Have you read any other of Meredith Hinds’ or Adalee Hude’s books?

• What are your favorite religious children’s books?

• Who are your favorite active illustrators?

Have a wonderful rest of your week,

-Dixie