Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

For decades I believed Irish blood ran through my veins. After all, my maiden name is Kirkpatrick. But during a trip to Dublin, I discovered my ancestors hail from the parish of Closeburn in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Still, it’s fun to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day and pinch those who don’t.

If you’re looking for clean fiction about the Irish to help your middle grader celebrate March 17, I highly recommend Ezra’s Story by Sherry A. Burton. Though it’s not set in Ireland, this eye-opening novella about an orphaned seven-year-old boy reveals the plight of those who emigrated to New York City from the Emerald Isle during the devastating potato famine.

Chapter One begins in 1915 with Ezra, whose grandparents emigrated from Ireland, accepting that his father had turned to alcohol to get his mind off losing his job. Ezra intends to stay on his father’s good side, so he won’t be forced to run away like his older sister. However, one night his father becomes mean while drinking, and Ezra must rush his younger brother, Tobias, from their tenement home. Ezra runs one way and Tobias the other. They lose each other in the dark. Now Ezra has no home and no family.

The next morning Ezra meets a vegetable seller named Angus who wears a unique green coat. After Ezra shadows Angus for a few days, the man offers him a job and a place to sleep. During the time Ezra spends with this leprechaun look-alike, he learns about his Irish heritage and the challenges that immigrants face. There are a lot of twists and turns in Ezra’s story, as well as a wee bit of violence and a few tear-jerking scenes. Thankfully, the story ends well for the young man.

Throughout the book, Angus shares wisdom from his home country with Ezra. You might enjoy a few of his sayings:

• A man takes a drink, the drink takes the drink, the drink takes the man.
• Put the darkness behind you and let the light shine on the lad you are to become.
• Being prideful is one thing, but thinking yourself high and mighty is another. It can lead to a mighty hard fall.
• Returning home looks best when the home ye return to is tidy.
• It be a fine day for young ducks. (When it rains.)
• I didn’t get to be an old man by worrying about things I cannot change.

Ezra’s Story is part of the Orphan Train Saga series. While each book tells a different child’s story, some of the children’s lives intertwine. The author recommends reading the books in order to avoid spoilers. But I will offer one spoiler: the next book is about Tobias.

If you’d like to learn about Ireland’s great potato famine of 1845-1850, try Black Potatoes by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Full of amazing line drawings, this nonfiction award-winner explains how more than one million impoverished Irish Catholics died of starvation and more than two million fled their homeland to the United States, Canada, and Britain.

Have you read any fiction or non-fiction books about Ireland that you’d recommend? Please comment below.

I’ll leave you with the popular Irish blessing:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And, until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of his hand.