2015 Catholic Mass Media Best book for Youth and Child was awarded to Author and Artist Maria Lourdes de Vera, RN. Art the Creation Stories is a book that rediscovers the capacity for artistic expression. It seeks to explore skills and artistic aspirations in visual art and storytelling. It inspires the use of one’s transformative power to create and nurture the Child’s well spring of imagination.
“This book is a well – crafted attempt to integrate art appreciation, storytelling and religion in a structured framework intended to cull creativity from and provided mastery to a child’s cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains using bible stories expressed as art. From a strictly educational sense, the exercises contained in the publication promote and practice high order thinking skills even in the young. It strengthens participative, constructive, and collaborative learning processes in the mental framework of learners at an age where they are most flexible and malleable.”Edwin V. Rodriguez, MD, MHPEd, Pediatrician and Medical Educator, UST-Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. Fr. Angel A. Aparicio, OP, Regent, UST-Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.
It introduces new movement in the language of teaching by validating the importance of Art and the beauty of the artistic expressions. It calls for collaborative process as an integrative factor in building a healthy and happy school environment. This new and unconventional approach to teaching was given a thumbs up by Fr. Rogelio Alarcon, OP Founder of the first Homeschool in the Philippines and Founder of Angelicum College, Quezon City and Seibo College, Malabon City; was quoted as saying that this is an “Excellent Work!”
It is a book that focuses on openness and freedom in the changing sands of culture and tradition seeing the search for meaning in human experience and communities. It recollects storytelling as a means in building communities. Art can be the communal expression of a community put into images and words in the Stories we share. Julieta Balza Pagsolingan, MD, UERMMMC, Retired Public Health Officer, San Diego, California, United States of America also commented that “This book is highly recommended for pre-school, grade-school, middle school teachers. University students and MA students who are interested in the development of the child.”
Art and the Creation stories captures variety of readers from Health Professionals, Teachers, Artist and Parents. This book has received good reviews. To quote Rosa Maria H. Marcelo, MD, FPPS, FPCAMS, Professor of Paediatrics. College of Medicine, University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital and President, Philippine Society of Adolescent Medicine Specialist, Inc. commented that “The language used to explain the child’s emotional and social capacities, the role of storytelling in school and the physiology of storytelling was very medical, a bit too high for laymen; maybe graphics on the Neural pathway and simple drawings about it can break the weight of the explanation.”
All mythologies are great subjects for painting and storytelling. It contains rich and vivid pictures that nourish the imagination. Myths provide the origin of the universe and Life. All cultures have their own mythologies. It is an expression of man’s attempt to comprehend Life. The search for meaning in life is an offshoot of man’s reflective nature. It is a book that appreciates the Old Testament Creation Stories in a way that is open and relevant to the times. .” Fr. Jesus Jay Miranda, Jr., OP, Ecclesiastical Faculties, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, commented that “This is a very useful book not only for Education but also for anyone who is willing to revive one’s noble calling in a life of creativity, the language of the soul together with one’s articulation of faith towards one’s salvation.
