"St. Patrick's Day," by Mary Cantwell

St. Patrick's Day
by Mary Cantwell
Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1967
40 pages
for ages 8-12

From the same era as Corduroy, which I wrote about last week, this little book tells about St. Patrick and the latter-day parades in his honor on March 17th, the day he died. Cantwell goes back to Roman times to trace the full history of the Catholic saint. He was born in the late fourth century, and as a boy, was captured by pirates and taken from England to Ireland as a slave. I'm sure many of you know all of this, but my son and I didn't.  Some of the narrative—as in a heavenly voice speaking directly to Patrick, helping him escape—a reader will have have to take either on faith or with a grain of salt, but all in all, I found the book a handy introduction to a much-loved holiday. Patrick returned to Ireland as a bishop, and his main contribution, she writes, was "saving the Romans' learning for the world." I liked the vintage three-color illustrations of the parade in New York, the same one Junior insisted he needed to attend rather than school this morning. (Maybe next year.)

St. Patrick's Day was part of a 1960s series called Crowell Holiday Books, and you can find lots of former library copies on Ebay and Alibris. Aliki penned one on United Nations Day that I'd like to see; Ed Emberley illustrated another on Flag Day. Mary Cantwell, a longtime editor at Mademoiselle, also wrote a trio of autobiographies, American Girl, Manhattan, When I Was Young, and Speaking with Strangers, now all collected in one book (for grown-ups), Manhattan Memoir.

Note: On Mondays Anastasia Suen, a children's book author, rounds up posts about nonfiction for kids, at her blog Picture Book of the Day. The March 17th compilation is here.