LITTLE people of various kinds feature in several these new Irish published children's books. That incredible shrinking inventor, Captain Cockle, is trapped with miniaturised wife and grandchildren in his flying submarine in John Joyce's latest adventure, Captain Cockle and the Pond (Poolbeg, £3.99). Before they can get back to their proper size again they have to face the menace of a hungry pike that seems to them to be 50 feet long, as well as attacks from swans, cats and dogs. Then they are mistaken for toys by some full size children, and manage to right a family injustice and give a villain his comeuppance in this hectic and enjoyable tale.
In The Leprechaun Trap (O'Brien, £3.99) by Dan Kissane, young Jimmy has an alarming encounter: "Even though he was so small, I was very frightened of him. You know how some people have pointy noses, or pointy chins? Well, everything about this person was pointy! His nose, chin and ears; his elbows and his knees; his hat even the ends of his shoes!"
The pointy leprechaun in deed gets up to mischief: sheep escape from the field, the hens stop laying, a tractor runs into the river by itself. Jimmy's grandfather's bicycle and beer crate leprechaun trap almost succeeds in catching the creature, but Jimmy faces a life of slavery if he can't win an exciting riddle challenge.
A similar life faces Packy in Mary Lavin's A Likely Story (Poolbeg, £2.99). He is captured and taken into a lair deep in a hill, by a little man who says he is five thousand years old. Everything in the place, including pails and harps is made of gold, but it is a thorn that helps to save Packy from his fate. Like Mary Lavin's story, Patricia Lynch's The Mad O'Haras (Poolbeg, £4.99) is a welcome new edition of a book first published over 40 years ago. No doubt this and her other classic children's stories will delight a new generation. They create a long ago but very real world of a rural life that was hard but full of vitality, especially as seen by Patricia Lynch's child characters.
Grania in The Mad O'Haras goes back to live with her widowed mother among her quarrelsome inlaws. Grania's skill at drawing helps to see her through fires, fights, and boycotts, and she survives being lost at night on a misty bog as well as more personal threats and dangers, in a story where landscape and characters are beautifully described.
Kevin McDermott goes back to the fifteenth century for his vivid descriptions of the making of illuminated books, and the menace of the Spanish Inquisition, in his story A Master of the Sultan, (Poolbeg, £3.50) which takes the young hero Manus on a journey from Kilkenny via France and Spain to refuge in Istanbul.
WHILE modern America is the setting for Joyce A. Stengel's Letting Go, (Poolbeg, £3.99) her story has a universal and touching appeal. Ten year old Kathy, abandoned at the age of six by her mother, at last finds a foster home where she begins to feel wanted. She gets the star part in the school play, Alice in Wonderland, and is sure that her mother will come back to see her and take her to live with her again.
Meanwhile she has to face the jealousy of a six year old and the sneers and mischief making of a school rival, as well as uncertainty about her new foster mother's affection. The relationships are subtly and tenderly described, and there is a tough reality in this unsentimental story that doesn't go in for easy solutions, but is all the more satisfying for that reason.