CWG: Finding Patience is too good not to share
Featured on CatholicWritersGuild.org
Adventures of Faith, Hope, and Charity: Finding Patience by Virginia Lieto has all the elements familiar to most children: families in transition, siblings, new classmates, loneliness and puppies!
For children, waiting for anything seems endless! Faith Livingstone, age eight, would agree, having just moved to a new town and about to enter a new school. Faith wants so badly to make new friends and feel like she belongs in her new surroundings. It all can’t happen fast enough for Faith! The book journeys with Faith as she struggles to make new friends and learns an important lesson in the value of the virtue of patience.
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
After school, Faith ran up to her room.
Mama rushed up the stairs and knocked on the door. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
Faith sobbed, “Nobody likes me!”
“No, no,” replied Mama. “They just don’t know you yet.”
“I want to go home,” cried Faith, “to be with my friends!”
Mama took Faith in her arms and said, “Faith, this is our home. Daddy’s job is here and we all need to be together as a family.”
As the story unfolds in scenes and terms that symbolize virtues, the reader finds that love brings Faith the patience she longs for as well as the friend she needs.
Finding Patience is as beautifully written by Virginia Lieto as it is illustrated by Carole Hahn Panzner. Their unpretentious style reminds me of the early readers that helped my children transition to reading by themselves. With reluctance, I gradually gave up my place of honor reading to them, and moved into the background, looking over their shoulders to help with a word or two. Finally I was consigned to listen to them read aloud from across the family room as I fixed dinner or sorted laundry.
Those books of old did not have the precious splendor of imparting lasting spiritual values to young readers. Nor did they satisfy me that my four children were learning anything other then reading skills and a few facts now and then. Finding Patience gives us a stunning tool to instill the virtues of Faith, Hope, Charity, Love, and Patience in children through the characters that make the pages fly by. I will invite one of my grandchildren to enjoy this book with me, for it is too good not to share!
Finding Patience is available at:
- Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle formats (including Apple’s iPad through the Kindle app)
- Createspace in paperback format
- BarnesandNoble.com in Nook format
Virginia Lieto is well known to our readers as a contributor to JOYAlive.net. She shares her gradual conversion story in Joy Stories: The Leap of Faith, telling how she left a 36-year business career to give the remainder of her life to God as an evangelist. You can find her blogging about the virtues at virginialieto.com. Her writing is inspirational and encouraging, while her suggestions for incorporating the virtues are practical. Virginia teaches Sacraments and Liturgy for the Catechetical Certificate Program at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine – Theology Program Online and is available for public speaking engagements. She is an enthusiastic member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, as well as the Catholic Writer’s Guild (where we had a blast at the recent conference).
