Dublin with children-Day 2

Dublin is a very family friendly city with lots of ways to see the sights.  Both the Dublin Bus Tour and City Sightseeing offer hop-on-hop-off bus services that narrate the sights and let you get on and off at 24 locations throughout the city.  You can buy the tickets on the bus, online, or at a tourist office and don’t need to start at any particular point....

Dublin with Children

Dublin is a very walkable city and well sign posted for city attractions.  There are many options for seeing the city, from boat tours to walking or bus tours.  If you have the time, or are planning on seeing a lot of attractions in the city, it’s worth investing in the Dublin Pass. We were staying outside of Dublin, so the first task was to get into town....

Review: Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O’Hara-Ireland with children

More than a million Irish emigrated during the Great Famine and Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O’Hara written by Elvira Woodrum and illustrated by Adam Rex captures part of their story, the courage that allowed them to emigrate, and the memories and traditions that followed them abroad. In this fictional account, Darcy Heart O’Hara is one of...

Review: The Wishing of Biddy Malone-Ireland with children

The lilting cadence of The Wishing of Biddy Malone makes it a great book to read aloud and the illustrations do a good job of capturing the feel of the Irish countryside and contrasting the faerie kingdom. As the story opens, we learn that Biddy Malone loves to sing and dance, “[b]ut her singing was like a rusty gate in a wild west wind, and when she danced,...

The Táin: The Great Celtic Epic

The Táin: The Great Celtic Epic, written by Liam Mac Uistin and illustrated by Donald Teskey, is the retelling of an epic Irish legend.  It is one of the tales of the Ulster Cycle, a group of eighty interrelated stories which recount the exploits of the Ulaid, a prehistoric people in the north of Ireland.  The Táin tells the story of a war started by Queen Maeve,...

The Barefoot Book of Pirates

 The Barefoot Book of Pirates by Richard Walker and illustrated by Olwyn Whelan is a retelling of seven pirate stories from Scandinavia, England, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Scotland and Morocco.  The stories are well illustrated and entertaining while being refreshingly free from gore. The hardcover edition of the book is accompanied by a CD with Richard Hope...