The Notre Dame Alumni Association recently welcomed the author, Paul Mitchell, and illustrator, Katie Broussard, of Sorin Starts a School: The Foundation of Notre Dame on their podcast to talk about the favorite children’s book. Check out the episode on the FaithND site or on Soundcloud!
Dan Allen, the Associate Director for Spirituality and Service at the Notre Dame Alumni Association, interviewed Katie and Paul about their early lives of faith and how this shaped the children’s books that they now create together. (Katie and Paul are siblings, a first for the podcast!) Both Katie and Paul recalled fondly their education in Catholic schools as well as at Notre Dame. It was, in fact, in these schools that Katie (two years older) was Paul’s first writing tutor and that the they first encountered the charism of different religious orders that are now the central themes of the children’s books they create together.
Katie and Paul’s first children’s book, Audacious Ignatius, won a Moonbeam award in 2019, and foregrounds the charism of the Society of Jesus just as Sorin Starts a School does for the Congregation of Holy Cross.
Katie Broussard and Paul Mitchell also discuss how the touchstones of the spirituality of the Congregation of Holy Cross have guided and enlivened their faith. The Congregation’s motto is “Ave Crux, Spes Unica” (“The Cross, Our Only Hope) which is beautifully articulated in the final section of their Constitutions. Katie and Paul spent a good deal of time on the page in the book that resonates these themes, seen below.
We are deeply grateful and honored to have Sorin Starts a School on the Notre Dame Alumni Podcast.