Spellbound: Tales of Enchantment from Ancient Ireland

Gr 4–8—Some of the best children's collections of Irish folklore, such as Seamus McManus's Hibernian Nights, Virginia Haviland's Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Ireland, and Malachy Doyle's Tales from Old Ireland, are out of print, which makes it especially disappointing that this effort by Irish Children's Laureate Parkinson has so little to recommend it. The richness of description and musicality of language that distinguish so many Irish folktales are missing here. The narratives flow unevenly. "Butterfly Girl" rambles for 13 pages, detailing magical transformations and a rebirth, only to end with the princess married—rather creepily for a second time—to the bigamous chieftain who'd abducted her decades before. After spending so much time on that tale, it's surprising that Parkinson offers a mere scrap of the many wonderful stories about Fionn Mac Cumhaill. Whelan's brightly painted illustrations are an attractive distraction from the text, but they are inexplicably populated with random fairies who seem to be spectators of the action, rather than figures in the stories. Batt Burns's The King with Horse's Ears and Other Irish Folktales (Sterling, 2009) or Kathleen Krull's A Pot O' Gold (Hyperion, 2004) are both better additions to folklore collections.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY