From the workbench

Twenty mysteries, one page at a time

Ask a room of Catholic parents whether they pray the Rosary with their children and you will get a lot of honest, uncomfortable answers. They mean to. They tried once. The four-year-old got through two Hail Marys and then wanted a snack.

That is the problem this book is trying to solve, and it is a smaller problem than it looks. Children are not bad at prayer. They are bad at sitting still with nothing in their hands.

What is actually in it

Twenty mysteries. Twenty full-page illustrations to color. For each one: the Scripture reference, a single sentence telling what happens, and the fruit of that mystery — all in both English and Spanish, on the same page, so nobody has to choose.

• One sentence per mysteryThe Annunciation gets: The angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will be the mother of Jesus. Mary says yes to God. That is the whole thing. A six-year-old can hold it.
• A guide to praying itStep by step, plus a labelled diagram of the beads, so a parent who half-remembers can follow along without apologising.
• The prayers themselvesCreed, Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Fatima Prayer, Hail Holy Queen — in both languages, so grandparents can pray in the language they learned them in.
• Single-sided pagesMarkers don’t bleed through onto the next mystery. This sounds like a small thing until it happens to you.

Why coloring, and why the Rosary

The Rosary is a meditative prayer. You say the words with your mouth while your mind rests on a scene from the life of Christ. That is a difficult instruction to give a child — and it turns out to be a very easy one to give a child holding a crayon.

Color one mystery each day, and pray it while you color.

That line is printed in the front of the book, and it is the entire method. A decade takes about four minutes. Coloring the Nativity takes considerably longer than that, which means the prayer finishes before the attention does. For once, the child is not waiting for the adults to be done.

Why both languages on the same page

Not as a translation exercise. Plenty of families in this country pray in one language and live in another, and children often end up fluent in the second while their grandmother is praying in the first. Putting both on the page means the same book works for everyone at the table, and no one is handed the version that isn’t theirs.

It is also, practically, how faith survives a generation. A child who learns Dios te salve, María beside Hail Mary keeps both.

Who it is for

Families praying at home, first of all. But it was built with parish faith formation in mind — the pages are single-sided so a catechist can tear one out for a class — and it makes a First Communion gift that outlasts the card it came with.

Ages six to ten is the honest range. Younger children will color it happily without following much. Older ones will read the Spanish.

Also available in English and Tagalog, and in English and Danish. If your parish or school would like a quantity, get in touch. As an Amazon Associate we may earn from qualifying purchases.