Scroll Top
BKGD01
Guide for the Catholic Reader

Selected Reading List, Rubric, and Rationale for Catholic Education

By Denise L. Donohue, Ed.D., and Daniel P. Guernsey, Ed.D.

Preface

This guide is designed especially for Catholic education broadly—including parents, diocesan and school leaders, teachers, librarians, homeschool curriculum publishers, and textbook publishers—and draws upon The Cardinal Newman Society’s Policy Standards on Literature and the Arts in Catholic Education. The guide focuses first on the purpose and goals of literature in Catholic elementary and secondary education. It then provides guidance for readers on how to approach a text. This is followed by a rubric to help determine which texts are best suited for Catholic education and to ensure that selection criteria are clear, understood by all, and targeted to the integral Christian formation of students.

The final section is a limited recommended reading list, which is mostly confined to better-known, time-tested works. These have been selected for a variety of reasons including their beauty, their cultural and historical significance, their suitability for examining the human condition in light of Catholic sensibilities, their capability to inspire virtue or warn against vice, their ability to elucidate other times and cultures to better understand our own, their capacity to entertain and inspire, and their fitness to guide the moral imagination. The list is not exhaustive but represents some reading selections used by schools recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society for their exemplary Catholic identity.

There is a limited amount of time in one childhood to read literature, so selections should come from the best books. These books should be read “fruitfully,” doing more than finding the main points so as to answer computer-based or multiple-choice questions. Students should enjoy the experience of reading, understand and identify with characters, grow in virtue, and expand their imagination, empathy, and creativity.

The guide lists books for Catholic Readers (K-Grade 12). See pp 13-22 for the list.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.