This afternoon I ran to the local library and was greatly distressed to discover that someone beat me to all of the St. Patrick's Day books available, excepting two (quite by luck, since they weren't on the same shelf as the others!). While I normally prefer to buy our books anyway, in this case I'd hoped to borrow many since I'm already desperately short on time. Here's what I did manage to find:

• Saint Patrick by Ann Tompert
• St. Patrick and Irish Christianity by Tom Corfe - Now OOP, but an excellent little book which is packed full of information!
• Ireland the Land by Bobbie Kalman (OOP?)
• Ireland the Culture by Bobbie Kalman (OOP?)
• The Legends & Lands of Ireland by Richard Marsh - Worthwhile for the photographs alone
• Celtic Fairy Tales by Neil Philip and Isabelle Brent
• Favorite Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs - Quite a slim book, also available free online (see below)

For myself I picked up The Irish Way: A Walk Through Ireland's Past and Present which I suspect will displace Abundance as this week's selection for "52 Books..." Also, I was reminded that we already have a book about Saint Patrick (as part of Sonlight Core 6), Flame Over Tara by Madeleine Polland. Therefore, we'll be dividing our month in this way...the first two weeks we'll read "Flame Over Tara," followed by Celtic fairy tales, myths and legends. I think. Returning back to Amazon to determine what I needed to purchase, I came across the following to supplement my earlier list:

• Twenty Tales of Irish Saints by Alice Curtayne
• Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend & Folklore: Fairy & Folktales of the Irish Peasantry by Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats
• The History of Ireland by Richard Tames
• This is Ireland by M. Sasek
• Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• Children of the Troubles: Our Lives in the Crossfire of Northern Ireland by Laurel Holliday

Picture Books

• Katie's Wish by Barbara Shook Hazen - About the Irish potato famine
• Market Day by Eve Bunting - Set in an Irish village

Also, I checked The Baldwin Project for books that were available free online, there we have:

• Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman: Gentle stories of saints from the British Isles
• Ireland: Peeps at History by Beatrice Home
• Favorite Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs
• Donegal Fairy Stories by Seumus MacManus
• In Chimney Corners, Merry Tales of Irish Folk Lore by Seumus MacManus
• The King of Ireland's Son by Padraic Column
• Celtic Tales Told to the Children by Louey Chisholm

Lastly, if we had more time, we'd read the Bantry Bay Series by Hilda Van Stockum - a fictional series from the 1930s, set in Glengarriff, County Cork, Ireland.