ASSIGNMENT TO THE COUNCIL; A Young Boy's Adventures at Vatican Council II

Chuck Gibson went to Rome with his father, a Washington, D.C. newspaper correspondent assigned to cover Vatican II. This enables Chuck to transmit to the reader a few very simplified definitions of what was going on in the Council and a lot of post card descriptions of Rome. He writes in the first person and reports his actions and reactions with such yeasty wholesomeness that he may place a heavy strain on the Christian charity of the Catholic boy readers for whom the book is obviously intended. Unfortunately there has been no sound description of the goals and methods and personalities of Vatican II especially prepared for younger readers in a general trade book and Chuck's ""adventures"" don't do much to fill the gap. The characters are stereotypes of the good Catholic family and Chuck's major coup, helping his father find the sources for newspaper dispatches, is manufactured fiction unblessed by creativity.