Peter Costello
At this time of the year the book shops are flooded with books for children and young adults, all hoping for great sales over the few weeks of the year when people go on a splurge of holiday related book buying. But like a puppy, a good book isn’t just for Christmas. On these pages we present a selection of those that, one way or another, seem the most relevant, the most interesting …and the most entertaining.
Younger children
Guess How Much I Love You: Here I am! A finger puppet board book
by Sean McBratney, illustrated by Anita Jeram
(Walker Books, €10.99)
Previously a highly popular picture book, this new adaption highlights the bond between parent and child, and as a finger puppet book is perfect for reading and playing together, involving as it does the affectionate life of Big Nut Brown Hare and Little Nut Brown Hare.
Animalphabet
by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Sharon-King Chai
(Two Hoots, €16.99)
Filled with all kinds of animals, this is an exploration book of an intriguing kind, by the ever popular Julie Donaldson, who has long been a Christmas favourite.
Happy Christmas Pigín
by Kathleen Watkins, illustrated by Margaret Ann Suggs
(Gill Books, €14.99)
A new book from a celebrity author, with the emphasis on author. Here Pigín and badger go Christmas shopping in Dublin, seeing all kinds of familiar streets and shops.
A visit to Clarendon Street Church to see the Christmas crib – a lovely touch, which many will appreciate – leads to a treat in Bewley’s. Truly a Dublin filled book.
Grandpa Christmas
by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Jim Field
(Egmont Books, €11.99)
Rather than buying presents Grandpa shares his memories of his own childhood with his granddaughter. But these days many of things he enjoyed in the world of nature seemed to be endangered. A warm hearted book, that carries a warning to all about helping to preserve the world as it ought to be. This is a tale for smaller children by the author of Warhorse, founded in familial love.
Oi! Duck-Billed Platypus
by Kes Gray, illustrated by Jim Field
(Hodder Children’s Books, €14.99)
Using the strange names and often stranger appearance of animals, this funny, rhyming, read-aloud picture book, will amuse both children and parents and perhaps inspired a few poets in the making.
The President’s Cat
by Peter Donnelly
(Gill, €14.99)
Author Donnelly’s first account of the fun events in the Áras was a great success last year. Here the saga continues. And after the re-election of his Mr Higgins, is likely to continue for some years to come. The wandering presidential cat has difficulty getting home, but thanks to an assortment of people in many iconic places, all is well in the end. Delightful, locally inspired entertainment.
Older children
Mythical Irish Beasts
written and illustrated by Mark Joyce
(Currach Press, €22.99)
Assembled from ancient myths, medieval legends, and local traditions it is a delightfully mixed bag of Irish monsters of all kinds. They are called monsters, but really in many cases they might well have been quite imaginary, or real creatures misunderstood. But this is just the thing for all those caught up in the present day fantasy trend. And who knows it might even inspire a few cryptozoologists of the future. A list of suggestions of sources and further reading would not have come amiss.
Dr Hibernica Finch’s Compelling Compendium of Irish Animals
by Rob Maguire, illustrated by Aga Grandowicz
(Little Island, €18.99)
The know all Irish professor, channelled by Rob Maguire, explores with readers the extraordinary world of Irish wild animals, illustrated by a very talented artist who can really paint. A fine introduction to what for some will be a lifelong joy.
The Great Irish Weather Book
by Joanna Donnelly, illustrated by Fuchsia MacAree
(Gill, €19.99)
Author Donnelly, familiar from TV as she works for Met Éireann, knows her isobars from her stratocumulus. As weather nowadays looms ever larger in all our lives, learning early about what it really is, and isn’t, and how it changes, is a very good idea. The large size means it is a stay-at-home book, and not for use out and about.
The Dog Who Lost His Bark
by Eoin Colfer, illustrated by P.J. Lynch
(Walker Books, €12.99)
Both author and artist grew up aware that life is not always kind or even fair. In this book a boy and a dog, who have their own separate losses, become united and create a new life based on affectionate love.
A moral fable for our time by the renowned Wexford writer, but a lovely tale too, illustrated by an admired artist from troubled Belfast, who finds the best in places and people and dogs.
Young adults
Island of Adventures: Fun things to do all around Ireland
designed and drawn by Jennifer Farley
(O’Brien Press, €16.99)
This will be of immense help to children (and parents) in putting down the little media mind grabbing monsters, and getting out and about to explore, discover things, and have lots of activity based fun. Ireland is the sort of country where even the rain cannot discourage people from chasing about the place. Just the thing for the car or the bicycle carrier bag.
Secret Science: The Amazing World Beyond Your Eyes
by Dara Ó Briain
(Scholastic, €14.99)
Comedian Dara Ó Briain has created for himself from his own interests a second career as a popular presenter on TV. This book, derived from his kids science show, wants to show readers that science isn’t stuff that goes on among daft boffins in secret labs, it happens everywhere.
Once this would have been called ‘understanding the world around you’, but now, what with the distraction of commercial interests that surround children, it has to be made a little more hectic and fun to become absorbing. Given those wonderful presentations at the annual science fair a book like this is a great idea.
I am the Seed that Grew the Trees
edited by Fiona Waters & Fran Preston-Gannon
(Nosy Crow Books / The National Trust , €23.99)
This anthology provides a poem for every day of the year, even leap years. They are drawn from a remarkable range of poets, but are all accessible to children. Lots of old favourites are here, William Blake, Emily Brontë, Walter de la Mare (what anthology could be without him – a great anthologist in his own right).
But also more challenging choices ancient and modern from Shakespeare to Robert Frost. This is the sort of book that, encountered early on, may become a life changing standby for good and bad days.
Focused readers
100 Poems
by Seamus Heaney
(Faber & Faber, €12.99)
This collection may make young readers realise that Seamus Heaney is not just a poet for study at school, but a man whose voice might come to mean something very special to them in other areas of their life. It is never too soon to learn that our literary heritage is for all, and is not just the preserve of teachers and experts.
Unlock Your Imagination: 250 Boredom Busters
(DK Childrens Books, €16.99)
Aimed at children seven to nine years old by the publishers, this is a compendium that might be enjoyed by a wider audiences. It encourages readers to leave their phones and screens and do something, making and exploring, playing games for groups, enjoying messy but rewarding crafts and challenges.
The book comes with a free double-sided board, counters and a press-out dice that can be used to play chess, draughts, and snakes and ladders; now there is a case of back to the future…
Adventures in Philosophy: Stories and Quests for Thinking Heroes
by Brendan O’Donoghue, illustrated by Paula McGloin
(Gill Books, €19.99)
The aim of author and philosopher Brendan O’Donoghue is to put an end to the thoughtless child. Philosophy has not much place in Irish schools, or indeed Irish life one often feels. This is in contrast to our friends in Europe. Here is a remedy in which the joys of curiosity and problems solving and learning about life will be encouraged. A very welcome initiative indeed.
…and don’t forget the classics
Now that Greek and Latin have been abandoned by Irish schools and parents, younger readers should be encouraged to make some contact with the literature of past ages. But not I think through books like Stephen Fry’s meretricious new book. The Odyssey, after all, is quite approachable by any child between 10 and 26 (which seems to be the age at which childhood ends for some these days).
But what about Thomas Kinsella’s translation of The Táin – that too is very readable and enhanced by Louis le Brocquy’s evocative drawings? Then there is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as an introduction to the Arthurian saga, Dorothy L. Sayers translation of The Song of Roland might lead on to tasting (if not consuming) her magisterial translation of the Divine Comedy. Then on to Magnus Magnusson’s Viking sagas, or Vladimir Nabokov’s translation from the medieval Russian, The Song of Igor’s Campaign.
When we enter the great era of the novel as work of art from about 1800 to 1940 there is a world treasury to open. So don’t let any child just read what are often shabby derivatives of the truly great and marvellous that fill the bookshops today.
If anyone is to enjoy Emily Dickinson in later years they should at some time (boys and girls) have read Louisa Alcott’s Little Women and Jo’s Boys. Nothing quite beats the classics, for in a sense they are all interconnected.
Then there are the classics of Irish literature – everyone on from Canon Sheehan to Patricia Lynch – which Irish publishers so often seem in a conspiracy to keep out of print. But that is what second hand bookshops are for.
An introduction to the joyous serendipity of book hunting and finding something remarkable to read that even your parents have never heard of cannot begin too early. Shopping on the internet just doesn’t do it.
Adulthood
And certainly no young person, girl or boy, should grow to adulthood without having read the full text of Robinson Crusoe, itself an epic of human endurance, creativity in adversity, and resolution in the face of misfortune. That one book is an education itself – as Gabriel Betteredge claimed in The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins, a book which a great poet (T. S. Eliot) once called “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe …”
There is just so much to read in the world who could ever be bored.