About forty years ago there began a culture-shift that steadily gathered momentum, a massive influx of children's literature that appeared good on the surface but was fundamentally disordered became the new majority.

To those who think the first and last words in Catholic American literature are Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy,"comes a worthy successor in, contemporary novelist Ron Hansen.

The best Catholic novels seem to be written by those who know, no matter how far they've fallen in faith and morals, that the truth is there.

Why have there been so few really good holiday films? It seems there's this little catch: Christmas is about Christ, and Hollywood knows Him not.

With five million copies in hardcover and three million in paperback, the Harry Potter series is a dramatic success. But not everyone is wild about Harry.

With enjoyment as well as instruction in mind, Wyeth O. Burgess offers the following suggestions, for young readers from about age four to early teens.

Whatever I am reading, whether fiction or fact, lowbrow or highbrow, it must take a back seat if I find a new Michael O'Brien novel. For some reason, his books are addictive.

The great American author Flannery O'Connor once remarked, "When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist."

There's a stranger in your house. On average, every day that stranger talks to our children more than most parents do in a month. We allow the stranger to teach them things and use language for which we would have a real stranger arrested.

Perhaps rather than a Catholic novel Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited should be called a sacramental novel in a particular sense.