“A very lively retelling of seven traditional Irish stories accompanied by striking stylised artwork from Niamh Sharkey (winner of the Mother Goose Award) – –Bookseller<br /><br />”In his cogent introduction, Doyle gives a succinct overview of the significance of storytelling in the Irish cultural tradition, linking it to the present by references to the government-sponsored systematic collection of tales in the mid-1930s…. The illustrations by Niamh Sharkey are two-dimensional abstractions, richly colored like illuminated manuscripts….[T]he book is a well-designed addition to folklore collections.” –Horn Book<br /><br />”This comic, tender collection of tales from the oral tradition will give adults as much pleasure to read aloud as it will give children to hear. Doyle has a lively prose style full of wonderfully idiomatic dialogue: one character, for instance, drinks so much he is left “as dumb as a haddock on Good Friday.’ Some of these stories of fairies and heroes are well known (Irish versions of The Swan Princess and Cinderella, for example). Less familiar ones introduce enjoyable characters such as Lusmore the melodious hunchback and Jack Doherty the tippling fisherman. The storytelling is a delight, but it is the pictures that make this book truly special. Sharkey’s palette of autumnal colours is exceptionally rich and luminous; she combines boldness with gentleness, and her humorous vision tames the monsters and endears us to the eccentrics. The collection ends with a cheeky self-referential joke: a story explaining how these tales were written down is illustrated by St Patrick carrying a copy of this very book under his arm.” —The Sunday Times (London)
“In his cogent introduction, Doyle gives a succinct overview of the significance of storytelling in the Irish cultural tradition, linking it to the present by references to the government-sponsored systematic collection of tales in the mid-1930s…. The illustrations by Niamh Sharkey are two-dimensional abstractions, richly colored like illuminated manuscripts….[T]he book is a well-designed addition to folklore collections.” –Horn Book
“This comic, tender collection of tales from the oral tradition will give adults as much pleasure to read aloud as it will give children to hear. Doyle has a lively prose style full of wonderfully idiomatic dialogue: one character, for instance, drinks so much he is left “as dumb as a haddock on Good Friday.’ Some of these stories of fairies and heroes are well known (Irish versions of The Swan Princess and Cinderella, for example). Less familiar ones introduce enjoyable characters such as Lusmore the melodious hunchback and Jack Doherty the tippling fisherman. The storytelling is a delight, but it is the pictures that make this book truly special. Sharkey’s palette of autumnal colours is exceptionally rich and luminous; she combines boldness with gentleness, and her humorous vision tames the monsters and endears us to the eccentrics. The collection ends with a cheeky self-referential joke: a story explaining how these tales were written down is illustrated by St Patrick carrying a copy of this very book under his arm.” –The Sunday Times (London)
