Irish Children's Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing (review)

In their introduction to this collection of thirteen thought-provoking essays about Irish children's literature since 1980, Valerie Coghlan and Keith O'Sullivan observe that children's books by Irish writers were relatively rare earlier in the twentieth century. In our globalized world of the Internet, along with international bestsellers, films, and TV shows, Irish children's writers often write for the non-Irish in the UK and the US to achieve a larger readership (1-3). Some children's authors address controversial historical events such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, while others—following earlier Irish children's writers—focus upon Celtic myths that sometimes appeal to international readers who want fantasy novels (3-4). Even before the Catholic Church's child abuse scandal, religion had been a sensitive topic in Irish children's books, and it still is. Likewise, homosexuality is not portrayed much: Irish children's literature tends to valorize the traditional, heterosexual family (4).

Ciara Ni Bhroin's essay on Irish myths in children's literature follows Coghlan and O'Sullivan's introduction. Ni Bhroin remarks that Revival writers such as Yeats and Lady Gregory rewrote Irish myths for adults to define the emerging nation a hundred years ago. Recent children's writers stem from this heritage, as they struggle to tone down the violence and sexuality of the original myths while preserving their interest (8). Ni Bhroin discusses the work of three acclaimed children's writers—Kate Thompson, Michael Scott, and Orla Melling—who use time travel to access the world of Irish myth while including contemporary issues.

Eilis Ni Dhuibnhe writes children's books under the name Elizabeth O'Hara; however, she is better known in Ireland under her own name as a writer of novels for adults. Ni Dhuibhne's essay investigates bogs as borderlands in Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child (2008) and Kate Thompson's The Last of the High Kings (2007). Next, Susan Cahill discusses historical novels by Gerard Whelan, Siobhan Parkinson, and Elizabeth O'Hara (Ni Dhuibhne) that are set between 1890 and 1922, when the Irish were struggling to gain freedom from England. Teenage female protagonists in these novels find their "nation's coming-of-age-is achieved at the expense of such figures" (52).

Valerie Coghlan ponders the absence of religion in many Irish children's books, in contrast with those written for Irish adults. She notes that children's writers who do focus on religion—such as Siobhan Dowd in A Swift Pure Cry (2006) and Marilyn Taylor, who has written several novels about the Holocaust—spent much of their childhoods outside of Ireland (59). However, novels for youth about Northern Ireland often feature religious conflict as the cause of a Romeo and Juliet plot (64). Nevertheless, Coghlan fears that children's writers' and publishers' reluctance to portray religion honestly creates somewhat "airbrushed" images of "Irish childhood" (66).

Examining fiction for young adults by Tom Lennon, Mark O'Sullivan, Siobhan Parkinson, and Siobhan Dowd, Padraic Whyte applauds them for dealing meaningfully with the problems that teens face, and for creating complex, arresting characters. Exploring the portrayal of families in children's fiction, Amanda Piesse compares idealized families seen in novels of the 1930s by such writers as Patricia Lynch with more radical versions of the family seen in Walter Macken's 1968 Flight of the Doves. Piesse regards Parkinson and Dowd as the best contemporary children's writers about family relations, yet observes: "The changing shape of the family is acknowledged but, apparently, with some regret" (96).

Nostalgia takes a different turn as Keith O'Sullivan discusses the influence of Romanticism on Irish children's literature. O'Sullivan admires the complex portrayal of children's fall from innocence into adult experience in Kate MacLachlan's Love My Enemy (2004) and Roddy Doyle's Wilderness (2007); yet he argues that Oliver Jeffers's picture books, Aubrey Flegg's Louise trilogy, and...