Little Catholic Critters

The Making Of

I wanted to write a children's book ever since I was in high school, which was way back in the early 2000s. But it wasn't until my daughter was born in 2020 that I decided to try and make it a reality. I wrote these book primarily for her, but thought others might enjoy them too.

Even before my daughter was born, I decided I wanted to try my best teach her about the Catholic faith. I hoped she would live a holy life and become the person God made her to be. I began looking for Catholic children's books to help me and I found many good books about the lives of the Saints, or very basic theological ideas such as, God loves us and is near us all the time. These books are great and I'll be recommending my favorites from time to time. But, I could not find any books that explain the cardinal virtues. I realized the words, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude are rarely used, aside from justice, but it's most often used in the political sense not the theological. I could not even explain what these words meant and yet the Catechism said we need these four virtues as solid habits in our daily life before we can even attempt to grow in other virtues, fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit. If I couldn't explain these virtues, how could I teach them to my daughter?

The idea for Little Catholic Critters was born. This past lent, 2021, I made a goal to research each virtue one by one so I could gain at least a basic understanding of what they meant so I could write these four books. The research and writing went rather smoothly, but, despite being a simplistic art style, the illustrations took me a very long time to complete. My hope is that these books will help me grow in the virtues just as much as my daughter. I have found that some children's books get stuck in my head after reading them over and over every night and I hope these books will too, so I can start forming virtuous habits as well.

Each book answers the questions what, why and how for each of the four cardinal virtues and is followed by ideas for how to practice them. They are meant to encourage deeper conversations between parents and children not to thoroughly explain every aspect of the virtues. I hope these books will help the words prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance become commonplace in our homes so they wont be obscure big words that sound scary or old fashioned, but will become familiar, comfortable concepts to strive for daily.

Erika M. Walker, Author/Illustrator