Irish Myths & Legends

With so many attractively produced retellings of 'Irish Myths and Legends' available, any new entrant to the marketplace requires some measure of freshness. Daly, while drawing yet again on ten of the best known stories from traditional Irish material, manages to invest them (especially in her dialogue) with a pleasantly colloquial tone, which has the effect of humanising some of their more formal attributes. This approach is particularly effective in those stories such as the timelessly tragic 'The Children of Lir', where it is important to remain aware of what Queen Aoife calls 'human voices'. Willey's colour illustrations, whether in full-page format or in focused symbolic detail, capture both the poetry and the pain of these enduring narratives.