Saint Francis of Assisi
Grade 3–6—Denham chronicles the lifelong spiritual journey of Saint Francis of Assisi in the conversational prose of a storyteller. The fictionalized account is divided into brief vignettes, each illuminating a key event in the man's life and illustrating how he modeled the compassionate ideology professed in the veneratedPrayer of Saint Francis. The son of a cloth merchant, Francis spent his youth carousing with a gang of young nobles and dreamed of finding glory on the battlefield as a knight. When God spoke to him in a dream, he gave up his military aspirations and became Christ's knight instead, dedicating his life to the poor. The author touches upon the most celebrated episodes in Francis's life, including his sermon to the birds, his taming of the wolf of Gubbio, his creation of the first crèche, and his being marked with the stigmata. The narrative is accompanied by simple cartoon watercolor paintings. Francis is depicted as a shaggy-haired, smiling man clad at first in rich tunics and then in a plain brown robe tied with a length of rope. Denham prefaces the text with theCanticle of the Sunand rounds it out withThe Call to Repentance. Young readers may enjoy this abbreviated overview of the saint's life but should rely on a more detailed source for reports.—Linda L. Walkins, Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Brighton, MACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.