Author Description

Leprechauns are elusive creatures despite their worldwide fame. Few people know much about them beyond their fondness for shoemaking, crocks of gold, rainbows (at the end of which those crocks are often buried) and perhaps their talent for granting wishes. The Leprechaun Companion aims to set this straight by collecting all that is known about these sprites and revealing much for the first time, such as the variety of their dress, what they get up to in their sociable moods and why lady leprechauns are so rare. Niall Macnamara, whose qualifications for writing about leprechauns include a great-great-grandmother from Cork who claimed to have been seduced by one, looks at the link between leprechauns and the other faery folk of Ireland, and at their cousins in neighboring countries - brownies, boggarts, piskies, spriggans, kobolds and many more. These elusive creatures have been drawn by Wayne Anderson, who first hit fame in the late 1970s with illustrations for classic books of the time, including The Magic Circus. Since then, he has illustrated a steady stream of books, including Thumbelina (1991), Wayne Anderson's Horrible Book (1997), and The Flight of the Dragons (1998).