Pookas a' Plenty: The King With Horse's Ears and Other Irish Folktales, retold by Batt Burns

Sure an' we're all a wee bit Irish, even Barack Obama (great-great-great grandson of one Falmouth Kearney of County Offaly), and with St. Paddy's Day just around the calendar's corner, there's a brand-new book of folk tales from the Emerald Isle just published. The King with Horse's Ears and Other Irish Folktales (Folktales of the World) (Sterling, 2009) offers a wide variety of tales, from the ancient Gaelic "Oisin in the Land of the Ever Young" (Tir in nOg) to "The Boy and the Pooka" (Glenaphooka), "The Clever Leprechaun," and "Paying the Rent," a story of the Irish diaspora.

Beautifully designed and printed, the volume is lavishly illustrated in full color by artist Igor Oleynikov--who doesn't much sound like a son of the Auld Sod either, but begorra, O'Leynikov and O'Bama might just be marchin' together in the parade come March 17!

Other titles which will get us wearin' the green include Kitty Nash's Irish Blessings: An Illustrated Edition, Carolyn White's A History of Irish Fairies, Jeremiah Curtin's Irish Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World. and Kathleen Krull's Pot o' Gold, A: A Treasury of Irish Stories, Poetry, Folklore, and (of Course) Blarney.