Top photo caption: Canva photo
By Leonard J. DeLorenzo, OSV News
I work with people who are exceptionally astute both theologically and pastorally – people who build programs, teach the teachers and form leaders in evangelization. My colleagues speak and write and counsel and mentor with steep resources in the Catholic faith. They know quality. They know the importance of aesthetics. They know, often better than I do, the difference between what is excellent and what merely looks like it. These are the people who stole Raquel Rose’s children’s books right out of my hands.
I mean that almost literally. When I showed some of my colleagues these samples I have received, they immediately felt the quality of presentation and production. They recognized, with barely a pause, the depth of Catholic formation being communicated in works like “My First Examen” and the “Catholic Mass Quiet Book.” It was kind of shocking to me, except it wasn’t – because I felt and thought the same things pretty much right away. We all knew that something beautiful, brilliant, and genuinely formative was in front of us.
My colleagues took these books for their own kids and for the children of friends, and then they ordered more. Something like a tiny revolution of joy turned through the McGrath Institute for Church Life when the Little Rose Shop’s resources made their way into our halls. We all agreed without prolonged deliberation. This stuff is amazing.
So who is Raquel Rose, and what is she actually doing?
The short version: Raquel is a former school counselor, a revert to the faith, a mother and the founder and creative director of The Little Rose Shop – a small, family-run Catholic business creating original children’s books, quiet books, faith-formed gifts and home décor for Catholic families.
Her story, which I got to hear more fully in our recent Church Life Today podcast conversation, is not a brand origin story. It’s a testimony. Raquel became pregnant at 21, chose life, finished school, built a family and eventually left a stable career to pursue what had started as a mother’s practical solution: Something for small hands to do during Mass that would keep them prayerfully present rather than restlessly chaotic.
What began as a quiet book for her daughter has grown into a full collection of resources that are, in every sense of the word, formative. And here’s what I mean by that. The word “formation” gets thrown around a lot in Catholic circles, sometimes to the point of losing meaning. What formation actually involves is the shaping of habits, imagination and affections – the long, patient work of ordering a person’s interior life toward the true and the good and the beautiful. Raquel understands this, partly because her background in school counseling gave her a keen eye for what children actually need and how they actually develop, and partly because she’s lived it herself.
Her “My First Examen” board book, for instance, isn’t just a cute product. It’s a gentle introduction to one of the most powerful prayer practices in the Christian tradition – the Ignatian Examen – translated into language and images that a toddler can hold and a parent can read aloud at bedtime.
The “Catholic Mass Quiet Book” gives children something to do with their hands during Mass that actually deepens their engagement with the liturgy rather than distracting them from it.
The “Peek-a-Boo Saints” series introduces children to specific saints – not generic “holy people” – with warmth and playfulness. These are not objects of pious decoration. They are tools for building up the domestic Church: The family as a genuine site of encounter with our living God.
What makes Raquel’s work quietly remarkable is the combination of things it holds together: Genuine theological fidelity and accessible beauty, professional quality and a deeply personal mission, the practical wisdom of a parent and the formation instincts of a counselor. It’s harder than it sounds to hold all of those together, which is why so much Catholic children’s material falls short on one dimension or another – too sentimental, or too didactic, or too generic or simply not made to last.
The Little Rose Shop is made to last. It belongs in your home, and in the homes of everyone you love with small children in them. Listen to the conversation with Raquel on Church Life Today, and then explore her shop. You’ll want to give these things away – I promise you that – and you’ll probably want to keep some for yourself.
Leonard J. DeLorenzo is a professor of the practice in the McGrath Institute for Church Life and concurrent professor in the department of theology at the University of Notre Dame. You can find his writing at leonardjdelorenzo.com.
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