Breakthrough!

Breakthrough! The Bible for Young Catholics received honorable mention in the illustration category of the 2006 Midwest Book Awards from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association, a nonprofit organization serving the upper Midwest publishing community.

We greatly enjoy the texts from Saint Mary's Press, and we are excited to use the Breakthrough! series this year in religion class.

It would be speculation to say which product Saint Mary's Press sees as its premier line when it comes to Bibles and related products. Nevertheless, they are smart to highlight Breakthrough as the Bible for Young Catholics. Identified as being for the pre-teen market (10-to-13-year-olds), Breakthrough is an excellent youth study Bible. The use of the Good News Translation, Catholic Edition makes it an easy read. This version will most likely be superseded as the reader gets older, but it will not go untapped due to the inviting nature of this work as a Bible for young people. There is a line of products to support its use in a variety of settings.

The Breakthrough Bible for ages 10 and above is a welcome addition and resource for catechists in parish faith formation and Catholic schools. What will first catch the attention of young people will be the artwork on the cover and the color inserts. The illustrations on the other pages are simple line drawings. After sharing a glance of the Breakthrough Bible with a fifth-grade Catholic school teacher and her students, reactions from the visual learners were impressive. The fifth-graders that I talked to were drawn immediately to the color illustrations.

There are many resources here for the classroom teacher, catechist or Bible study group. The first is the introduction at the beginning of each of the books of the Bible, in the form of headlines and factoids that offer a great prelude to each book.

The Catholic Connections link the Bible stories to our Catholic beliefs. How many times have we heard children or parents ask, "Where is that [doctrine] in the Bible?" With the Catholic Connections, we have another resource to address their curiosity and to nourish their faith.

I found the Pray It! sections a clever way for the reader to enter into a conversation with God over the material that had just been read. It creates another way for the reader to pray.

The Study lt! sections provide a platform for the reader to enter into a more in-depth study of the material at an appropriate level.

The Live It! sections provide a few simple ways for anyone to put the word of God into action. . . .

Along with the separate teaching-activities manual and the student-activity workbook, this should be a resource on every principal and catechetical leader's bookshelf. It should be found in every faith-formation setting where young people gather.