St. Patrick's Day Books

Reviewed by Katherine J. Turcotte

When a little girl named Lauren questions the belief in leprechauns, two leprechauns, Maddy and Be-bub, from a land faraway called Shrilannon, answer her letter and head off on their magical flying shamrock to visit her just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

What a magical tale this is to share with your wee ones just in time for St. Patty's Day!

Laura and the Leprechauns reinforces the use of imagination and creativity - something that children need more than ever in these days of high tech.

Author Amber Kingston writes and illustrates this charming book. Amber enchants the reader by using a variety of mixed mediums which include real photographs, lots of glitter (that children adore) and delightfully colored pencil drawings.

Let Laura and the Leprechauns be a stepping stone to planning a fun-filled day of imagination and play with your children!

Armchair Interviews says: This is a book your children will come back to time and time again!

Reviewed by Eric Zeda (age 9) for Reader Views (1/08)

This story is about a little girl named Laura who believes in leprechauns. Her friends tell her that leprechauns do not exist, so she writes a letter to find out if this is true. Two leprechauns, named Be-bub and Maddy, receive her letter and decide to pay her a special visit. They travel a long distance on their magical shamrock to find Laura and prove to her that leprechauns are real. When they get to her house, they leave clever notes and clues. Laura wakes up on St. Patrick's Day and finds a wonderful surprise. She makes special friends and has a wonderful time.

I really enjoyed this book. The illustrations and pictures are great. I like the way some of them sparkle because they are covered with glitter. I also liked pretending that leprechauns are real and that magical things exist. I recommend "Laura and the Leprechauns" to anyone who likes to believe in magical beings, and likes to use their imagination.

Great book that is well illustrated and edited. Everyone should read this book even if it is not St. Patrick's Day. It is well written book that parents should share with their children.

This is a beautifully illustrated children's book. Laura is a little girl who writes to the leprechauns because she believes in them, but her friends don't think they exist. Two friendly leprechauns receive her letter, and decide they should go visit. They take their magic shamrock and fly day and night to reach her. The leprechauns leave hints for her to figure out they are there. When they finally meet, they enjoy a lovely St. Patrick's Day tea party together by the lily pond.

The story is well written, and moves quickly. The lovely illustrations bring the story to life; my favorite is the one where they are riding their shamrock in the night sky. Many of the illustrations that include the leprechauns are enhanced with glitter, a refining touch. While their meeting occurs on St. Patrick's Day, I would read this story to my boys any time of the year. We are of Irish descent, and leprechauns are always welcome in our house!

"Laura and the Leprechauns" by Amber T. Kingston is an imaginative story and captures the magic of the world of leprechauns. The story is appropriate for reading during any season, and will soon become a St. Patrick's Day favorite.

Amber skillfully used both visual and written communication mediums. The radiant colors used in her stunning illustrations bring life to these legends. Amber uses captivating photographs in overlays with her beautiful paintings depicting the bushes and hedgerows where the leprechauns hide. Twelve of the pages feature sparkling glitter, which will stir up and enhance the creative imagination of the young reader and add to the sparkle and magic of narrative.

Inspired by the imagination of a seven year, Amber takes the reader on an amazing journey as Laura's wish come true. The author's word choice is age appropriate. The illustrations and dialog communicate the wholesomeness of children, through their facial expressions, and the sense of emotion they project. The book reminds the reader, whether young or old, anything is possible when you believe hard enough.

"Laura and the Leprechauns" is a timeless story of belief in Leprechauns and is destined to become a classic in children's literature. This is a book that will endure time. It should be added to school libraries. It will make a perfect gift of any occasion.

The first amendment gives us the right to free speech and for the most part this is a fairly simple concept right? Well in 1994 in Massachusetts this became a complex legal issue that turned a simple parade into chaos.

Riveting from beginning to the very end, this 600-page fact filled legal expose on how our court system really works, is like nothing else you'll ever read. The authors take you on a journey from the state court right the steps of the highest court in the land.

Using actual trial transcripts and painstaking detail, the author's leave no stone unturned. I was simply amazed at how much information was packed into the book. I was simply astounded by the way the system works.

Law professors and students of law need to take and read this work. It is most likely the best book of the first amendment law. A great work in the legal field and a very good read - well done!

As an attorney, what I found most interesting about this book was the use of trial transcripts to help frame the debate on the larger First Amendment constitutional issues. The authors did a superb job of telling a complex story from beginning to end. I would recommend some of my old professors take a close look at this work, and consider using it in trial advocacy and constitutional law classes. I don't remember anything like this when I was at school, but can say it told me a lot more about how the judicial process works than I learned in the classroom.

By far, this book tops all others on how our courts operate. The authors have given a detailed look at the legal system at every level, state and federal, and cover so much territory in so short a space that the book borders on being overwhelming. This is the definitive book on "process". Using rich citation to trial transcripts the authors show in meticulous detail how some judges try to unwrap constitutional guarantees to achieve what they think the law shoud be. I read three other works which aspired to this detail: "Out of Order", "Civil Action" and "Closed Chambers" and can state that none were as insightful as this. This is truly a remarkable work, and should be mandatory reading in every law school in this country.

"Riveting..." National Law Journal; "Compelling... well-written..." Bimonthly Review of Law Books; "Tremendously engaging..." AOB News; "One of the most informativbe law books I have read..." Journal of the Indiana Bar Assoc.; "Chilling, troubling, Kafkaesque..." Prof. Charles E. Rounds Jr., Suffolk Law School

A friend of mine gave us this book, and my kids have LOVED it. They can't wait to build their own leprechaun trap for St. Patrick's Day and have already started discussing what materials they'll use for the task.

It's a sweet, well-written story with adorable illustrations, and I'm sure it will certainly remain one of our favorites even after March 17.

My husband and I wrote this book based on our family's St Patrick's Day traditions. Our house has been plagued by a leprechaun every March and our children have great fun trying new and different ways to catch him. Of course they never do! We hope this story inspires other children to make clever traps for the leprechauns who visit them on St Patrick's Day, and that the book brings lots of fun to all.

It is 1849 and Mary Mclean and her family are fresh off the boat from Ireland. Mary is excited to hear about stories and traditions from Ireland that are told by other members of the Irish community where she lives. One of the things she gets told about is the St. Patrick's Day parade. Mary is excited about this and all the stuff that surrounding it. More than anything, she wants to be part of it so she asks Mr. Finnegan, a local shop owner, if she can ride on his cart in the parade with him. Mr. Finnegan agrees but only if Mary McLean can find a perfect shamrock. This is an almost impossible task because it is winter. Mary searches and searches and she can't find one. She finally stumbles across a leprechaun who says he'll give her one later. Months later, he is back the day before St. Patrick's Day. Mary captures him and asks for the promised shamrock. The leprechaun says he lost it and tricks Mary into turning away. Mary goes home dejected. Her father comes home with a surprise! He found a shamrock for her and Mary is able to be in the parade. She's very happy.
This book is priceless. The artwork is fabulous and reminiscent of Norman Rockwell. The artwork is very engaging. Each page is laid out exactly the same. On the left side, there is the text. On the right side, there is a color illustration. The moral of the story seems to be that good things do happen to good people. This is a wonderful theme. It also seems to have a theme of good things happen to those who wait. This is something important to instill in children because so often they want things right now this very instant. The story line is entertaining and easy to follow. It is a wonderful book to read.

This is a story of a little girl who searches for a four leaf clover so she can be in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The fantasy and excitement of a leprechaun appeals to my students. It lends very nicely to creative writing in the classroom. This is a must, especially for primary teachers.

This book is perfect for babies & small children. My son is 9 months old & this is one of his favorite books. It has short phrases on each page while teaching numbers & doesn't have a lot of pages. The colors are bright & pictures are cute. The edges of the pages have a shamrock & my son finds it easy to turn the pages. He's also attracted to the cover because the shamrocks are shiny.

This board book makes for a good introduction to St Patrick's Day for younger kids because of it's simple concepts, colorful pictures and sturdy construction. (It can also be used year 'round for it's counting.) "St. Patrick's Day Countdown" is a book that counts backwards from 5 down to 1 using St Patrick's Day theme items and then some; bunnies, shamrocks, a pot of gold... you get the idea. It's also fun because the book is not exactly book shaped but has grabbable shamrock "tabs" so little ones can help turn the pages. I bought this for my one year old niece and her mom said it was "perfect". I like that it does not have hit-you-over-the-head St. Patrick Day overtones (ie. nothing religious) to it but still captures the spirit of the day.

Why do we celebrate St. Patrick's Day? Why do we wear green? And just who is St. Patrick? This book, one of a series of holiday symbols books, answers these questions and more in a clear, concise writing style. One of the best parts of the book, though, is the large, colorful, eye-popping photographs on each page. As a librarian in a K-3 elementary school, this books meets all of my requirements: informative, accurate and eye-catching enough that students will pick it up on their own. I also recommend the remaining books in the series: Easter Bunnies, Thanksgiving Turkeys, Fourth of July Fireworks, Halloween Jack-o'-Lanterns, and Christmas Trees.

Why do we celebrate St. Patrick's Day? Why do we wear green? And just who is St. Patrick? This book, one of a series of holiday symbols books, answers these questions and more in a clear, concise writing style. One of the best parts of the book, though, is the large, colorful, eye-popping photographs on each page. As a librarian in a K-3 elementary school, this books meets all of my requirements: informative, accurate and eye-catching enough that students will pick it up on their own. I also recommend the remaining books in the series: Easter Bunnies, Thanksgiving Turkeys, Fourth of July Fireworks, Halloween Jack-o'-Lanterns, and Christmas Trees.

Excellent story that is beautifully written and illustrated. It captures an important part of our heritage while emphasizing the importance of family tradition and roots. My 8 year old just loved it and I can see my self reading this to her over and over again. The story teaches U.S. history on one level and family sharing on another. The illustrations are beautiful. I strongly recommend this book.

A very sweet story with a lovely message about traditions and remembering your heritage even as changes through the generations blur the past. Well written in a style that respects both the subject and the readers, and lovely illustrations as well. Hope to see more from this author!

Seems surprising that an Englishman and an Australian have written the first history of Ireland's national day! No offence guys - I really like your book. Cronin and Adair are academics, so this is a serious and wide-ranging study. It looks at the rise of the legend of St Patrick, commemoration of the 17th of March in Ireland, and its export with Irish migrants to England, USA, Canada, and Australia. The book raises important questions about the politics of celebrating "Irishness", particularly at key moments of tension in Irish history, such as the 1916 rebellion and the 1970s Troubles. But it is also a tale of mirth and joy, for St Patrick's Day has always been an occasion for merriment and good cheer. Some of the stories will leave you laughing and scratching your head. For example, an Arab troupe once marched in a Montreal parade and won first prize for best entrant. Today the St Pat's festival in Dublin is a HUGE event, which, as Cronin and Adair explain, emerged directly out of Dublin Tourism. St Patrick is still there somewhere, midst the craic and booze. This is a big book, but it has sections about St Pat's Day in different parts of the world at different times. So you can either read the whole thing or pick and choose the bits you fancy. As for me, this book has helped me to understand why St Pat's Day is such a big deal. And it has helped me to appreciate the history of the Irish wherever they have migrated.

I was sent this as a gift ready for St Patrick's Day, and to be honest wasn't sure that there was much to know about 17th March. But wait, this book rocks. It's great, full of anicdotes, reads really well, and kept me full of stories for my Irish friends for days. If you do nothing else this St Patrick's Day, grab a Guinness, put your feet up and read this book. Once you've read this you'll realise that, sure, it's a darlin day to be Irish!

How can anyone not like St. Patty's Day. This has a variety of fairly easy and cute crafts, you're sure to find something to keep kids interested for a few minutes and end up with some festive holiday decorations!

At one point in this book there is an intriguing short account of a minor disaster that occasionally occurred when shunting railway rolling stock. What could happen was that the wagons got into such a position that nothing could move until something else moved first, a kind of deadly embrace. When I read at another point the best short summary I have yet seen of the attitudes and mindsets that led to the wholesale obliteration of Britain's rural railway network in the 1960's I thought again of those wagons in their deadly embrace that a little foresight and competence could have avoided.

The book is basically for the flourishing railway nostalgia market. It is one of the best and most comprehensive of its kind, and I hope that the paperback edition does as much justice to the superb photography as the expensively-produced hardback does. It aims to pack in a lot of information and comment, and when I came to the second plate following the contents page I momentarily feared it might be overdoing the detail a bit - the actual snapshot is magnificent, a kind of High Noon on the West Highland line, and the effect is not really enhanced by the information that another locomotive, not attached to either train let alone shown in the picture, had `failed before Dumbarton with a broken pin on the right hand valve gear radius rod'. No worries fortunately, the contributors keep their understandable enthusiasm and garrulity in check thereafter. The text is mainly by David St John Thomas with attributed contributions from other writers. These are miscellaneous in nature, the general idea being to communicate the `feel' of the rural railways in their heyday. Ireland as well as Great Britain is given extensive coverage, and there is a welcome amount of comment on some of the quainter enterprises that could surely have been undertaken nowhere else in the world such as my own beloved Leek and Manifold Light Railway which, as the text says, `went from nowhere to nowhere'.

The main narrative is knowledgeable and provides some handy correctives to popular misconceptions, notably in pointing out that the decline of the country railways took place later and more abruptly than is commonly thought. However the most significant and enlightening section relates to the `reshaping' of the railways carried out in the 1960's. What had happened was this. After the war the British Railways Board was managed by placemen, amateurs and timeservers. They had no concept that the world of rail services needed fundamental change. They ploughed on with the production of steam locomotives instead of converting at once to the cheaper and more passenger-friendly alternative of diesel. They maintained the elaborate system of semaphore signalling instead of replacing it with modern lights, they retained the antiquated profusion of manual signal-boxes, they put up a pig-headed resistance to converting stations to unstaffed operation, they refurbished stations and track only days before closure, and they connived inertly at maintaining jobs that had no modern relevance. To their uncomprehending frustration they found that the railways were losing money hand over fist, government policy thwarted their attempts to raise fares, and the outcome was one of the most deplorable strategic studies that ever masqueraded as a business review.

There was no feasibility study evaluating alternatives. A crude and question-begging cost-effectiveness formula was applied, and for all its grandiosity and pretentious presentation the supposedly new strategy was only a front for a panicky wholesale application of what had been the Board's thinking for years, namely to prune the network savagely. Undoubtedly, the situation had got out of hand. Dieselisation and resignalling were now in progress, but desperately late. Undoubtedly, the trades unions were dinosaur organisations with an inbuilt resistance to change. However the fact seems to me undeniable that there had been a total lack of vision at management levels. It was late in the day, but still not too late to consider other scenarios, and while only the most myopic enthusiasts objected to every last closure, the general arguments put forward in the reshaping document were so full of holes that the more appropriate cases were tarred with the disingenuous crudity of the overall presentation. The opposing sides were now locked in their deadly embrace, neither able nor willing to budge. A very British solution was therefore invoked, namely a public enquiry that for sheer dishonesty would have disgraced the Soviet Union. The terms of reference were blatantly rigged to prevent proper questioning or argument, and the whole wretched panic-stricken apology for a strategy was implemented almost without change.

The results can be seen in Britain's rural communities to this day. In particular, the compensatory bus services that the reshaping plan blithely envisaged materialised only briefly where at all. These communities are now largely without public transport, bus conveyance is a busted flush, and the ecologically positive alternative of rail will have to be reconsidered after the unnecessary damage has been done. I remember the gist of a wry poem giving a roll-call of the stations for closure read by Michael Redgrave on television. Fairford, Coniston, Moretonhampstead, Gosport, Minehead, Silloth and even Barnard Castle, some of you may yet see rail service again in my lifetime.