Our Lady of the Green Scapular
by nico fassino
louvain exiles, 116 pages, $24
Our Lady of the Green Scapular charts a relay race of grace. The vision granted to Sr. Justine Bisqueyburu in 1840 in France wound up blossoming, fading, and sending up new, tender shoots in Monona, Wisconsin. And Fassino, who runs the Hand Missal History Project, has an eye for how small moments illuminate the faith. His slim volume is dense with vivid details.
A military chaplain, his throat ravaged by poison gas in WWI, asking Our Lady to restore his ability to preach over a rosary and a cigarette; a church plant in Wisconsin that converted a chicken coop into its sanctuary; and that same church, swelling to a national shrine, carefully designed without stairways so that the halt and lame might enter freely on pilgrimage.
The story begins with the miracle of Our Lady’s apparition, but as the story approaches the present, safeguarding her gift becomes a matter of tense parish council meetings, tax exemptions, and bishop-mandated reassignments. Fr. Jerome Mersberger, the steward of the shrine, struggles to know how to balance his ordinary duties as priest of the parish and the duty he feels to the pilgrims streaming in from around the world. In the end, the shrine is shut down and the Marian statue that oversaw miraculous cures spirited away in secrecy by “an enigmatic priest.” But the story of God’s love is never-ending—the form of the invitation may change, but Mary’s call to know her son echoes on. Who will be the next hearer?
—Leah Libresco Sargeant
Girlatee
poem by a. m. juster,
illustrations by grant silverstein
paul dry books, 55 pages, $14.95
Worried about how much your kids will like a children’s book by a former commissioner of the Social Security Administration? No need—right from the start, the playful language of A. M. Juster’s Girlatee makes you realize you’re in good hands:
Offshore there was a family—
a manatee, a mummatee,
and Grace, their little girlatee.
A. M. Juster, the pen name of Michael J. Astrue, is an award-winning master of formal verse and translation. He has published twelve books of poetry, ranging from original poems to Latin translations to a parody of Billy Collins. But this book is neither a notable figure slapping a name on a kid’s book nor fusty poetry with some pictures added. A. M. Juster knows how to write for children.
He tells the engaging story of a little girlatee, Grace, who gets separated from her manatee parents when they try to evade the blades of a motorboat. Juster’s verse is perfect to read aloud—comforting tetrameter, ear-catching alliteration and assonance, and clever, natural triplet rhymes that children will love to anticipate. He even drops in fun vocabulary—who doesn’t love the plural of “octopus”?
and dive to eelgrass, thick and high,
alive with fish, and octopi,
and cranky crabs that scuttle by.
Accompanying the story are Grant Silverstein’s illustrations, which capture both the swirling sea life and the emotions of the manatees in elegant black-and-white drawings. Girlatee is intended for ages two to six.
—Midge Goldberg
Why Does Everything Come in Threes?: A Short Book About Everything
by peter kreeft
ignatius, 146 pages, $16.95
There are few authors like Peter Kreeft, who write so frequently, so penetratingly, so wittily, that it can be hard to keep up: Recall G. K. Chesterton, the late Fr. James Schall, or Alan Jacobs. We return from the reading corner to the business of everyday life, only to find that our author has produced three or so more books since we last recalled him. It’s fitting, then, that his new book encourages us to see and remember the trinitarian relationships within the created order left as images of its Creator, the Triune God, as a means to read our experiences as invitations to communion with him.
The primary benefit of Kreeft’s framing of matters anthropological, philosophical, and theological not only as trinitarian but as a narrative (the first four chapters consider the “Setting,” “Characters,” “Plot,” and “Themes” of the human story) is that it allows readers to commit to memory fundamental truths about man, world, and God. Almost thirty-five years ago, Mary Carruthers wrote in The Book of Memory that the medievals showed that memory can be trained, and that human beings, as body–soul composites, memorize facts more easily when they are associated with stories and images. Here is a primer full of wit and references to particular experiences readers will share with the author, oriented toward a remembrance of timeless philosophy and theology in an age of haste and immediacy.
While the final chapter aims to evoke devotion, the appendices stir us to more advanced philosophical thinking. Each one could begin a book of its own: on the metaphysics of gift; the philosophy and theology of relationality; and the challenge that Christianity posed to the Aristotelian idea of woman. The only thing missing is one of the book’s chapters: Kreeft announces in the introduction a plan to write seven, but the table of contents and body present us with only six! Perhaps that missing chapter, on the trinitarian structure of religion itself, is the seed of his next book.
—Alex Taylor
