Leprechaun in Late Winter

Leprechaun in Late Winter starts with Jack stuck on a piece of homework. He has to write a story and he cannot think of a single thing to write about.

What happens

Then two fancy letters appear on his notebook page by themselves, and he is off across the road into the woods, because T and K means Teddy and Kathleen, and that means the tree house is back.

The job this time is a girl in County Galway in 1862 called Augusta. She doesn't know yet what she's good at. Jack and Annie have to inspire her, which Kathleen describes as breathing life into somebody's heart, and which sounds a great deal easier than it turns out to be.

Augusta is the surprise of this book. She is not a plucky heroine waiting to be unlocked. She is prim, tired, about eleven, and extremely pleased with her own kindness to the poor (Jack and Annie land in ragged boots and mud, so the poor is them). She calls them "my poor dears" and tells them they must find out what they are good for. Jack loses his temper with her and tells her she's a snob, which she absolutely is, and which does nothing whatsoever for the mission.

Then they meet Mary Sheridan, and the book changes gear.

Mary is an old nursemaid in a leaking cottage who leaves milk on the windowsill for the fairies. She tells Jack a story about a girl and a bright cloud and small kings and queens riding out of a wood, and she tells him to write the facts down, which he does, because that's what Jack does. And Mary is the one who explains what's actually wrong with Augusta. She looked for the magic with her head instead of her heart, and when she couldn't find it she stopped wanting to hear the stories at all.

That's a properly sad idea to put in front of a child, and it's handled with a light hand.

Nothing here is frightening in the usual way. There's a very cold Irish spring, a mother who pinches her daughter's shoulders to make her stand straighter, and sisters who say out loud that the visitors might have bugs in their hair. The hardest bit is the flatness of Augusta's life, not the magic.

And when the magic does come, it's worth the wait. A whistle that plays itself. Horses no bigger than a dog. A leprechaun who is nine hundred years old, drives a hard bargain, and will not be called Wee Willy under any circumstances.

What to read next

Should your reader want another child who gets talked into something by Jack and Annie, the journey before this one was A Good Night for Ghosts. New Orleans, a boy with a job hauling coal, and a horn he isn't allowed to keep.