Joyfully surprised by the Guardian Angel Prayer Book

A few weeks back I ordered two prayer books from the new ACROD bookstore, Orthodox Goods. The online store is a new enterprise for the Christ the Saviour Seminary and it looks like they will continue to add new items as time passes. In search of a good, pocket-sized prayer book (I suggest the Potamitis Publishing "My Prayer Book" for a larger equivalent) I ordered the Guardian Angel Children's Prayer Book and expected to see a book of prayers with occasional colorful pictures to entertain the eye.

What I received instead was much more than that. On durable yet flexible picture-book quality paper the majority of the book is actually a walk-through of the Divine Liturgy. It presents pictures, short explanations, and prayers in a way that a child could hold the book and follow along quite easily. The last third of the book (again, beautifully illustrated) is a compendium of prayers in a child-readable, large font along with a short listing of greetings based on the time of year (e.g. 'Christ is Risen!' 'Christ is Born!').

I plan to use this book both at home and at church this weekend as an aid for understanding the Faith. It should come in quite handy when a child's mind wanders so I pass down the book and ask him, "Find where we are in the liturgy."

As I mentioned a few months back a lot of emails I receive are requests for help finding a good online religious items retailer. Next week I'm going to list a number of them I have ordered from along with a rating system and anecdotal notes.