Martín de Porres: The Rose in the Desert

The age range for this book could be early elementary to about third grade. This book tells the story of Martín, a young boy in Peru who grows up facing hardship and prejudice because of his mixed heritage. Even with these challenges Martín chooses to live a life of kindness and humility. This book does a really good job highlighting its moral and spiritual message. It emphasizes values like kindness, perseverance, and treating others with dignity, even when you are treated unfairly. This book would be great to use in your classroom to highlight service to others, faith and empathy. The illustrations are warm and expressive, using earthy tones and gentle imagery that match the peaceful and reflective tone of Martín’s life. They are show more easy for students to follow aswell show less

In the biography of, Martin de Porres: the rose in the dessert we learn of the life of a young son of a Spanish nobleman. Martin de Porres, was born into extreme poverty in the "barrios of Lama". His mother wanted the church fathers to allow him into priesthood, but instead they excepted the young boy as a servant. But before everyone's eyes, Martin began to perform miracles.Miracles such as, healing.Rumors made their way around the city of a strange "mulatto boy" who had the gift of healing within the palm of his hands. Who, before anyone else, gave to the people of his small town in the "barrios". For years , he healed those who needed it. First, the ones who were the worse and then the rest proceeded after. Although, he had not been show more given the tittle of priesthood he still served in the church, until he was finally received by the Dominican Order, and was no longer called the "worthless son of a slave", but rather Martin de Porres: Saint and the rose in the desert. With this book, students learn the life of a young man who lived life in slavery and finally gained the title of something way bigger than a slave.

Through out this book, teachers can introduce the meaning of a Biography. Also, what a biography is and what types of biographies there are. Another thing students learn form this book is phonemic awareness and word recognition by acquiring new vocabulary as the text is read. To me, I thought that this book was a good read but it was really slow to start. I think that if it is going to be used, it needs to be used in the higher grades (2nd at most). There is a lot of wording that the younger kids might not understand because they are not developmentally ready. show less

This biography is about the Saint Martin de Porres and his journey to sainthood. It addressed his early life of being born into extreme poverty and the struggles and journeys he had to go through which ultimately humbled him. Porres was able to ignore the boundaries between the rich and the poor and performed miracles and aided both. He ultimately established a unity of sainthood which defied the priesthood laws of being from "pure blood."

I would read this biography to a 1-3 grade classroom when addressing social injustice, poverty, and racism. I would also use this if working in a catholic school when learning about different saints and miracles performed to be inducted into the brotherhood.

This enlightening story illuminates the life journey of an illegitimate child who rose from poverty to sainthood. It begins by his mother bringing him into a cathedral, where an unpleased priest baptized him. His mother referred to the infant as "a rose in the desert" and named him Martin. At an early age Martin became an apprentice to a doctor where he discovered his gift of healing. He yearned to be in the priesthood but was denied because of his "impure blood" therefore he agreed to a life of servitude to the Monastery. Throughout his life he shared his miraculous gift of healing with animals and humans, both of poverty and nobility. He transformed from a life of anonymity to everyone referring to him as "a rose in the desert", just show more as his mother did. Eventually, he was allowed to take his vows into priesthood where he continued to share his gift and because of his life of charity he was canonized. show less

This is a beautifully illustrated book of the life of St. Martin of Porres, the first black Saint, who spent his life starting as a poor fatherless child in the barrios and eventually became a monk. During his life he learned to heal, and became devoted to helping the poor and sick, humans as well as animals. The illustrations are rich, jewel toned pastels, giving the story a magical quality.

This has been my favorite book so far, it challenged compassion and judgments of the community and Martin. I personally felt humbled about my everyday actions with people and animals after reading this book. I think that this book will be a great read for children to show them how you care for others and how good Karma can come around. I absolutely love this book.

I had never heard of Martin do Porres before but he has a very interesting and inspiring story. He was the son of a former slave and a spanish noble who started his life in poverty and ended up getting and education and eventually becoming a monk after working in the monastery cleaning for many years. He treated everyone equally and was the first black saint from the America's canonized and became the patron saint for interracial marriage among many other things.

The illustrations are very bright and colorful and have matte quality to them that somehow makes them pop more for me. I thought they were very beautiful and the amount of detail in each page is outstanding. The architecture and buildings were impressive and I also thought that show more the people in each drawing managed to show a lot of movement and emotion. Just gorgeous. show less