BROTHER WOLF, SISTER SPARROW

Kimmel tells his brief stories well, based primarily on Butler’s Lives of the Saints. He chooses his saints’ tales by their relationship to animals and includes the saint’s feast day, emblem, and what they’re patron of. He begins with St. Francis of Assisi’s “Sermon to the Birds,” and ranges from fairly well-known stories, like St. Hubert and the stag, to some obscure but fascinating ones, like St. Hormisdas and the camels and St. Notburga and the pigs. Other tales have a whiff of history about them, like Charlemagne’s crucial appearance in St. Giles and the doe. Kimmel humanizes the saints, but still emphasizes their holiness. Each full-page illustration in acrylics is bold, dramatic, and sometimes startling: like the bees clustering on the face of the baby Ambrose in extreme close-up. An author’s note describes the process of canonization, but these are stories that will attract an audience separate from any religious message. (Biography. 7-12)