The book that began it all...

Mother Mary Loyola had used the simple allegory of a little maid and the gracious King who deigned to visit her as a catechetical tool for many years...a brief sketch of this story appears in The Children's Charter, her book of advice for parents and teachers published in 1911.  But it wasn't until 1919, when she sent a version of the story to P.J. Kenedy, an American publisher who took a keen interest in her work, that she began expanding what was originally a simple vignette into a full book-length story.  It then took two years before this book was finished and brought out to great acclaim.  

Though Mother Loyola knew that children would love this wonderful story, she could not have foreseen that it would be this, her only allegory and one of her last published works, that would rekindle an interest in her work many years later. 

It was through our family's love of this story that we discovered the treasure trove of other works by Mother Mary Loyola, and St. Augustine Academy Press was born.