Product Description

When a poor devout widow begs for a scrap of bread from a rich faithless baker, she promises to participate in the king's wedding mass as payment for the baker's generosity. The baker writes "One Mass" on a scrap of paper and places it on his scale to determine how much bread it is worth. To his and the entire town's surprise, nothing in the shop, not even the gigantic wedding cakes made for the king, outweighs the simple piece of paper representing the true worth of a mass. Luminous old-world watercolor paintings grace the interior of the book and gold foil artwork lends an air of solemnity and sacred beauty to the story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #723824 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 32 pages

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2002
"A lovely Catholic parable . . . that can be read with pleasure and understanding by those of any religious background—or none."

Christian Library Journal, February 2003
"Unfolds its message with solemn grace and purpose . . . woven together with a lilting text and warm, romantic illustrations."

About the Author
Josephine Nobisso is the author of 17 books including Grandpa Loved, Grandma's Scrapbook, and The Moon's Lullaby. She lives in Quogue, New York. Katalin SzegediS has illustrated numerous children's books and was awarded the Most Beautiful Children's Book Award by the Society of Hungarian Publishers and Distributors.

Customer Reviews

Beauty and Substance
Exquisitely written and illustrated, "The Weight of a Mass" is a rare gem of a book that will be appreciated by all ages and even all faiths, because though the theme is Christian, it speaks of the importance of God in our lives, and the triumph of faith over secularism. The story is based on an event that is said to have occurred in Luxembourg butcher shop a few generations ago. In this telling it is placed in a bakery, as Jesus our Lord is the Bread of Life, and there are many other symbolic aspects to the tale, which increase our interest, and add freshness to the story every time we read it.

Josephine Nobisso, the author of many books and winner of numerous awards, writes in a lucid style with a rich and varied vocabulary. Not only will this lovely book bolster your child's faith, it will also increase his knowledge and usage of the English language, something that is hard to find these days, and it is one of the many reasons to own this book.

Katalin Szegedi began her career as an illustrator in her native Hungary in 1991, and her art that accompanies this story is marvelous in its expressiveness and technical skill. There is a grace and sense of movement in the figures, intricate patterns in the clothing, and terrific perspective and detailing in the architectural structures. The subtle colors are also beautifully balanced and contrasted. I especially like the depiction of the baker's son, who has a lively sweetness in his eyes and mouth, and a lovable innocence.

"The Weight of a Mass" has won several awards, and it will touch your heart and lift your spirit. The quality of the book is excellent, with thick semi-gloss paper and sturdy construction for both the hardcover and paperback editions. Inspired and full of beauty, "The Weight of a Mass" is a worthy book choice for the children in your life.

Delightful! Ten stars!
'The Weight of a Mass' might well have been the title of a dry and dusty tome of physics, something that lists values in tables how much certain things weigh. This is at the heart of the deliberate pun in the title - weight can indeed be a physical attribute (the pull of gravity on an object, being weighed on a scale, as the metaphor is embodied in this text) but also the moral, ethical and spiritual weight we give to things that matter in our lives.

This is a fable in the true sense of the word - it is a story that stands by itself as a good tale, but the meanings throughout add depth and breadth, and, appropriately this case, weight. It is ostensibly a book for children, but will also delight adults who have a care for the meaning found in sacraments, liturgy, parables and narratives.

Narrative theology, the understanding of God and our relationship with God inherent and expressed in story form, has long been a favourite of mine. Parables of Jesus are a key example of this, but children's stories and fairy tales of many cultures have also carried the burden of conveying meaning through accessible and memorable situations and images. Few who read or hear the story of the Good Samaritan forget it, as the images transcend the simple plot into much more meaningful applications across time and cultures. The same is true for this story.

The idea in Josephine Nobisso's story is simple at first glance - there is a prominent baker in the town who is rather stingy. A widow comes, seeking a few scraps of bread, and gets rebuffed by the baker. She promises to dedicate her hearing of the mass to him, at which point he mocks her belief and decides to put this to the test, literally testing the weight of 'one mass', written on a small piece of paper, against the goods in his shop.

The imagery is readily accessible - bread is used in communion service, and this is what the baker makes. However, the bread the baker makes somehow becomes something different weighed against the paper; it literally changes into something unexpected, and indeed, the weight of 'one mass' is something that cannot be calculated by the baker's scale, efficient and official though it might be.

There are various characters in the story who symbolise different people in our regular lives. The baker-shop story is actually a story within a story (another well-established biblical tradition), the larger story being the preparation for a royal wedding, in which the baker features as the provider of the wedding cake. The baker's son represents a person with vocation to service, charity, and possibly priesthood.

The book is available in both hardback, paperback, and in Spanish. In each case, the printing and production values are very high; the colours are deep and rich without being overpowering, with wonderful graphics by Katalin Szegedi, whose work has won her native Hungary's 'Most Beautiful Children's Book' prize. Nobisso has been awarded the Delta Kappa Gamma 'Friend of Education Award', and is a distinguished graduate of the National Catholic Educational Association.

Perhaps most remarkable is the real-life connection that Josephine Nobisso explains in the postscript (which reminded me somewhat of Jesus' needing to tell the disciples what the elements of the parables meant). While the story is original, Nobisso credits the story of Father Stanislaus of Luxembourg, where a conversation between a butcher and a captain of the guard was interrupted by a poor woman making the same offer with regard to the mass for a morsel of meat. A similar miracle occurred there that inspired the captain of the guard to lifelong faithfulness in attending the mass, such that his own son became a priest - that son being the same Fr. Stansilaus.

This is a simply wonderful and remarkable book, the weight of which will remain with me for a long time to come.

just beautiful!
This book is by a Hungarian illustrator introduced to me by a student, and I had to search for some of her work in English. It was WELL WORTH the search. This is SUCH a beautiful story and is matched by it's beautiful pictures. A very sweet moral is revealed at the end and its not overly preachy. I will treasure this book!