In Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on June 25, 1981, five teenagers and a nine-year-old began telling others that they were seeing the Blessed Virgin Mary on a local mountain with the Infant Christ in her arms. The religious visions of the children continued daily. The Blessed Virgin Mary, who identified herself as the "Queen of Peace" on that day continues to bring messages for the entire world. Like Lourdes and Fatima before it, Medjugorje has become a holy pilgrimage site for Christian worshippers around the world. The Visions of the Children, Revised and Updated Edition features exclusive conversations with the six apparitioners who have been receiving, since June 1981, visions and messages of the Virgin Mary. After 25 years, three of the original visionaries continue to see the Blessed Mother daily. This revised and updated edition includes: -new information on the six visionaries who first saw Mary at Medjugorje -Messages from the Virgin Mary through June 2006 -extraordinary secrets about the final chapter in the history of the world -A new, updated list of Marian Centers worldwide. This is a must have volume for anyone interested in the Blessed Virgin Mary, Marian apparitions, or Mejugorgje.

Collage illustrations introduce the letters of the alphabet.

Through the centuries and across the world, the Virgin Mary has appeared to ordinary people of every race and culture, from scholars to illiterates, from the devout to the unbelieving, from young children to the dying. In this exquisite and inspiring volume, Janice T. Connell chronicles authenticated Marian apparitions and messages Mary has brought from God--as mother, comforter, Queen of Angels, and Prophet of the Apocalypse. Drawn from scripture, legend, and never-before-published eyewitness accounts, these are personal stories--the author's own, and her interviews with other visionaries--filled with beauty, wonder, and joy. Meetings with Mary ranges from Elijah's vision of Mary eight hundred years before her birth to the world-famous children of Medjugorje in Bosnia, whose encounters with her began in 1981 and continue daily. Here also are lesser-known, deeply touching encounters with the Mother, from an office worker in Holland to a Japanese nun, from a Jewish banker in Rome to an awestruck crowd of visionaries, few of them Christians or of any other faith, in Egypt. Meetings with Mary asks also: as the millennium draws near, shadowed by disasters, disease, and brutal civil warfare, are Mary's frequent appearances a signal to the faithful? Perhaps she is calling us all to join her now on a voyage toward the eternal shores of peace, joy, and abiding love. . . . "[Connell is] passionate about prayer and sharing her love of Jesus' mother. . . . She has a way of simplifying complex theology." --Rocky Mountain News

The kaleidoscope, the stereoscope, and other nineteenth-century optical toys analyzed as “new media” of their era, provoking anxieties similar to our own about children and screens. In the nineteenth century, the kaleidoscope, the thaumatrope, the zoetrope, the stereoscope, and other optical toys were standard accessories of a middle-class childhood, used both at home and at school. In Playful Visions, Meredith Bak argues that the optical toys of the nineteenth century were the “new media” of their era, teaching children to be discerning consumers of media—and also provoking anxieties similar to contemporary worries about children's screen time. Bak shows that optical toys—which produced visual effects ranging from a moving image to the illusion of depth—established and reinforced a new understanding of vision as an interpretive process. At the same time, the expansion of the middle class as well as education and labor reforms contributed to a new notion of childhood as a time of innocence and play. Modern media culture and the emergence of modern Western childhood are thus deeply interconnected. Drawing on extensive archival research, Bak discusses, among other things, the circulation of optical toys, and the wide visibility gained by their appearance as printed templates and textual descriptions in periodicals; expanding conceptions of literacy, which came to include visual acuity; and how optical play allowed children to exercise a sense of visual mastery. She examines optical toys alongside related visual technologies including chromolithography—which inspired both chromatic delight and chromophobia. Finally, considering the contemporary use of optical toys in advertising, education, and art, Bak analyzes the endurance of nineteenth-century visual paradigms.

Beggars…Outcasts…Homeless Such were the forgotten, uneducated children in China when the Spirit of God fell upon their humble orphanage, the Adullam Home. The boys spent days in powerful meetings, praying and praising God. Under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, they prophesied, saw visions, and discovered: Angels…how they operate and protect us Unbelievers…and their fate Heavenly occupations…what our jobs will be Paradise…revealed through the eyes of children The throne of God…experiencing true worship Death…what happens when we die Demons…and their evil works This mighty outpouring was a fulfillment of God’s promise: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions.” Acts 2:17

In the past two centuries hundreds of apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been reported, drawing crowds to the seers and the sites and constituting events of great religious significance for millions of people worldwide. Here Sandra Zimdars-Swartz provides a detective-like investigation of the experiences and interpretations of six major apparitions, including those at La Salette and Lourdes in France during the mid-nineteenth century; at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917; and the more recent ones at San Damiano, Italy; Garabandal, Spain; and Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, where the apparitions continue. Adopting a phenomenological approach to these "encounters with Mary"--one that is neither apologetic nor antagonistic--the author explores the tension between the personal meaning of the events for their subjects and the public appropriation of this meaning by a larger religious community. Along the way she examines the backgrounds of the seers, their willingness or reluctance to talk about the apparitions and their messages, the amount of emotional support they received from family and community as news of the apparitions spread, the reports of miracles at apparition sites, the reactions of local authorities, and the steps taken by the Roman Catholic Church in officially recognizing or rejecting the apparitions as worthy of belief. The author concludes with a survey of religious worldviews based on Marian apparitions, focusing especially on the now-popular transcultural apocalyptic nature of these messages to the modern world. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Toledo examines reports of numerous radical God-encounters experienced by children after they were taught about the power of the Holy Spirit: visions, miracles, travail, prophetic evangelism, marketplace intercession, and prophecy.