Customer Reviews

Making Heart-Bread:

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Making Heart-Bread is more than a picturebook - it teaches young readers how to take in emotional and spiritual nourishment from grateful memories of the day, and how to trust in the love of one's family and caretakers. Told from the point of view of a young girl who learns to make both tummy-bread and heart-bread from her beloved grandmother, Making Heart-Bread recounts the grandmother's childhood, when a terrible war left her on her own, until kind people took her in and cared for her. "No matter how often the grown-ups tried to tell us that we were safe now, nothing seemed to help. When we ate our bread at supper, we were afraid each bite might be the last food we would ever have. One day, one of the grown-ups had an idea. He saved some bread from supper. At bedtime, he gave each of us a piece to hold. Holding our bread next to our hearts, we could finally sleep in peace. All through the night, the bread reminded us, 'Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.'" Making Heart-Bread is not specifically a religious book; the simple techniques that it offers to reassure oneself that "Today I was loved and I will be loved again tomorrow" are a wonderful blessing to children of all backgrounds, and especially recommended for children in families who have undergone recent changes.

Making Heart Bread is an excellent tool for children and adults to get in contact with feelings as they explore what was good about their day and what was not so good. Always cherishing the Heart Bread that was made each day.

Making Heart Bread (Paulist Press, September 2006, hardcover, 32 pages) by Matthew Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn and Dennis Linn is not just your typical picture book.

The themes of love, security and nourishment go beyond the simple story shared in the pages you read your child. In the book, a grandmother and her granddaughter share the experience of making two kinds of bread: tummy bread and heart bread. In making tummy bread, they share together the fun of baking and providing physical nourishment. Grandma then recounts to her grandchild the origins of making "heart bread", something she learned as a refugee child in war.

Without giving away the story, I want to share that "making heart bread" involves sharing with your child a time of quiet prayer and reflection at the end of each day, based on the Ignatian spiritual process called "the examen".

Making heart bread encourages you and your child to look back at the best and most challenging aspects of each day. This wonderful picture book, featuring delightful illustrations by Francisco Miranda, reminds us that a time of daily reflection with our children is both essential and blessed.