I often buy Catholic books for my grandchildren. When I saw The First Christians: The Acts of Apostles for Children by Marigold Hunt, I snapped it up since Acts is one of my favorite books of the Bible. It is also the perfect one for children to begin with because it's such an adventure story describing the apostles travels, persecution, miracles, and shipwrecks. What could capture a child's imagination more easily?
Before I started reading the book, I noticed that it was not a new publication, but was originally published in 1939 by Sheed and Ward, a bastion of orthodoxy in the old days. Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, were in fact, well known for their "soapbox preaching" as members of the Catholic Evidence Guild which presented Catholic teaching in public in an easily understandable style. They were frequent lecturers at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, London.
