Book Review: Can You Find Saints?

Can You Find Saints? Introducing Your Child to Holy Men and Women is a great way to get young children interested in learning about the saints.  I recently had the pleasure of sharing this book with my children, ages 5 and 9, and they enjoyed searching out the hidden pictures and learning about a plethora of saints.

The book is richly illustrated and incredibly detailed.  It's sort of like a Catholic Where's Waldo or Look and Find book.  If you have children who are interested in books such as those, they will likely enjoy this book very much and learn about our Catholic faith at the same time.  As a mom, I love it when books combine fun and learning.

The book is comprised of thirteen picture searches.   In every picture there  are ten hidden pictures your child needs to find.  Some of the searches are easy and others are a little more challenging.  We've had this book for a few weeks now and we still haven't found all of the hidden pictures.  That's a good thing if you ask me, because it will not only keep children busy, but it will also serve to bring them back to the book over and over as they try to seek out all the hidden pictures.

Every search has a different theme.  One search is all about the Popes who have become saints,  another focuses on how saints are identified, while other searches are dedicated to saints who are listed in the Liturgy of the Mass or the Bible.

Within each search there is a list of specific things, actions or saints to seek out.  The book does a nice job at explaining what you are seeing in the picture.  The writing in the book is very approachable for young children.

To help you further explain the pictures to your children, a parent guide is provided for each picture.  I like the parent guides because they enumerate things that you should point out to your children as they look at the picture and find hidden objects.  They are sort of like a teacher's manual for the searches.

This book offer offers a lovely glossary that defines three pages worth of terms found throughout the book.  I find that to be quite a nice touch and I like knowing that my older daughter can sit with the book and look up any of the words for which she doesn't know the meaning.

Overall, I think this book is a lovely resource for faith formation.  It's a fun way for children to learn about the saints.  Children who have saint names can search this book to see if their patron saint is found among the crowds of saints packed onto every page of this book.  My daughters sat with this book for over an hour pouring over the names of the saints in the pictures looking for their own names, names of family members and their favorite saints.  They happily brought to book over to me every time they found a favorite saint, or one they thought seemed really cool or had an interesting name.

This book would make a lovely gift for the Catholic child in your life.  It could be a fun First Holy Communion gift, a baptism birthday gift, or even a really cool gift to put under the tree or in an Easter basket.

I was provided with a complimentary copy of Can You Find Saints? by the publisher, St. Anthony Messenger Press, in exchange for my honest review.