It is a hot and humid August day in Rome, and competitive twin boys Ignatius and Paulus are arguing as only brothers can do. The boys and their parents live and work in the home of a wealthy Christian couple, Master Giovanni and Mistress Julia. One afternoon, when the boys suffer an unfortunate mishap, a wedge is driven between them.

Meanwhile, in answer to a prayer from Giovanni and Julia, the Blessed Virgin Mary appears to them and to their friend Pope Liberius in a dream. She predicts a shocking miracle — a snowfall in summer! She also makes a request that Ignatius and Paulus can help fulfill, but only if they put animosity behind them and work together.

The Miracle of the August Snow retells the legend of the miraculous snowfall that occurred overnight on August 5, 358 in Rome. This story allows young readers to enter into a fun, faith-building account of an apparition of the Blessed Mother, which led to the building of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore (Saint Mary Major).

Our Lady’s hands are said to have once repelled pirates from the small, secluded island of Corvo in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Every year, on the August 15 feast of the Assumption, the people of Corvo, the smallest of nine islands in the Azores, celebrate their patroness, Nossa Senhora dos Milagres (“Our Lady of Miracles” in Portuguese), with Mass, a procession and a daylong feast in the village.

They come to thank Our Lady for her intercession. Generations of Corvinhos have credited her with countless miracles. She has been a refuge in times of adversity, ever since it is said that she washed up on this island’s rocky shores inside a wooden box, during the height of the Reformation in the 16th century.