Escape to a never-never Ireland Granny Bridget’s Fairy Tales,

Granny Bridget’s Fairy Tales,

by Felicity Dempsey

(Atlantic Papers Press, €14.89; contact info@atlanticpaperspress.com)

Here is a children’s book which will be welcomed by many parents. As many parents and grandparents are well aware it is difficult to wean young people away from the mass-produced pabulum which fills the internet at all hours.

Felicity Dempsey is a retired science worker who is now exploring her more creative side, she says. She is also a grandmother, whose own grandchildren will have played a part in the genesis of this book.

The text is a set of four stories featuring the lively Granny Bridget and her wonder waving wand.  The country where all this happens is not actually identified as Ireland, but it is a country that certainly uses euro notes and coins. The stories themselves are adaptations of such well known kindermärchen as “Jack and the Beanstalk”, “The Three Little Pigs” with their housing problems, “The Rat Catcher of Hamelin”, and finally “Hansel and Gretel”.

Granny Bridget with her strange skills is able to open worlds of adventure for the children. But unlike the tales of the Grimm Brothers or even Hans Anderson, this is a realm from which all real evil is absent; nobody, not even the Giant is killed, and every one, having set out with supplies of Nutella sandwiches and fresh fruit, gets home safe and sound. Here there is no crocodile with a ticking clock inside to remind us of our mortality.

There is a certain amount of Granny and Mammy advice about saying please and thank you, picking up toys and rubbish, and cleaning one’s teeth before bed, but that is only to be expected perhaps when scientific Grannies take to writing books. But it is all entertaining and quite charming, and the children are all as good as gold when away from Mammy.

The darkness that is to be found in the original fairy tales is swept away. That is the kind of thing better left for reading at a later age. This book is intended for those between 7 and 9.

It comes from a new firm, and though the artwork is fine, one would have preferred to see a more traditional typography across the pages. What looks good on a designer’s screen is often a bit lumpy on the page.