by MAUREEN VINCENT
Prayers from a Mother's Heart by Judith Mattison (Mayhew-McCrimmon Paperback 80p) Children's Mass Book by M. K. Richardson (MayhewMcCrimmon 35p) If the title of the first book makes you feel "yuk", try not to be put off by it.
Being a mother was most probably never a matter of roses all the way, hut can surely never have been a trickier, less highly regarded job than in today's Western society.
So let's hope that we can all be forgiven for feeling, as we often must. inadequate and ill-equipped to cope. From teething troubles to teenage tantrums, everything that our children can produce can seem expressly designed to show up our (11A n weaknesses of character.
Here is a book where you, if you are a mother, will meet yourself on almost every page.
So the days are too jam-packed with all the trivia of running a family and a home for a mother, who is probably trying to cope with an outside job as well, to have any time for the luxury of prayer or meditation. God knows, we all know how true that is. But here is a hook for the times when you are too tired or too strung up to think of formulating a prayer for yourself. Try it and see. Children's Mass Book, charmingly illustrated on every page by a Little Sister of Jesus, can be read to under-fives — preferably before taking them to Mass.
Fives to sevens might read it for themselves during the celebration of the Mass.
The text explains in simple terms just what is going on during the Mass and the illustrations. though simple in outline, provide a wealth of useful detail.