Rainy Day

Me and Jonah went to the Central Branch Library after dropping Noah off. Jonah fell asleep on the way there. A book of Irish myths caught my eye and even after Jonah woke up. I couldn't stop reading it. I had only heard of one of the characters before. There were leprechauns in one story and in another there was the people going through a rainbow to Tira na Nog, which is a a land of immortals. I had been reading the kids a children's version of the Monkey King... usually on the train. The thing is, they like the story but the book just doesn't have enough pictures. They need to have at least one picture every page so that your kid has something to look at while you're reading. This Irish myth book had a ton of pictures. I ended up borrowing it. We'll see if Noah likes it. The Rainbow curtain reminded me of the Norse myths where the rainbow is a bridge. There is of course a lot of borrowing of stories between these two cultures. The Vikings were always raiding Ireland, but they way I learned it in a class in college, Dublin was actually built by the Norse who set up camp there, because the Celts didn't build. Also the Leprechauns were supposedly based on a native people that were displaced by the Celts.
There was another people in the myth books that were displaced instead that went underground and became fairies. Thuatha De Danann. I guess even though the adult Monkey King  book I have (because no child would pay attention for that sort of antiquated text) has a lot of Chinese Mythology in the intro, Pangu and all that, I really need to find a version with nice pictures. We'll see how Noah likes this book. We're going up to New Hampshire and the weather is all rainy and cloudy. And when the weather is like that, especially when I'm going somewhere extremely white and in the middle of nowhere, I usually feel Irishy so I figure Irish myths will be more appropriate for Story time.