SIXTY SAINTS FOR GIRLS

Joan Windham, popular English author (Six O'Clock Saints, More Six O'Clock Saints) blends fact with fancy and hagiography with legend in Sixty Saints For Girls. Readers in the eight to twelve age group won't find detailed lives of their ""name Saints"" here, but they'll surely relish the stories Miss Windham concocts for them often from a bare minimum of historical data. Among those included are many well known Saints -- Joan of Arc, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth of Hungary, Helen, Monica and Bernadette, and the author tries in each case to present a segment of their lives which would be new to her audience. However, girls named Penelope, Susan, Valerie, Victoria, Sylvia, Gladys, Audrey, Hilda, Belinda, Irene, Maude, Christine, Constance, Jennifer, Gwen or Grace, to mention some, also come into their own among the Sixty Saints, and for this Miss Windham is to be thanked. Occasionally the author displays a tendency to be distressingly coy in her presentations, but this probably won't mar the enjoyment of the book for youthful readers. St. Anne, grandmother of Jesus Christ, is the subject for the first sketch in the book. A ten year old French girl, Anne de Guigne, who died a few years ago, is heroine in the last. Between the stories of these two Anne's are fifty eight more Saints for little girls to love and imitate.