Here are 83 books that The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, or John Howland's Good Fortune fans have personally recommended if you like
The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, or John Howland's Good Fortune.
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As a kid, I loved books of all shapes and sizes, especially those written by Irish authors. They made me feel like there was a chance of my own dream coming true – that I would walk into my local bookshop and see a book with my name on the cover. In the last twenty years, we've seen an explosion of new Irish authors making their mark on the world of children’s literature. Don’t get me wrong, I adore leprechauns, and many of the classic Irish books that have been loved by previous generations. But there’s a crop of brand new Irish authors making some incredible work, and it’s time to give them some love!
Long before Artemis Fowl made Eoin Colfer a superstar, he wrote this laugh-out-loud and heart-breakingly beautiful story about a friendship between two boys from very different worlds.
When Benny’s family relocates to Tunisia, his world is turned upside down – before he meets a streetwise local called Omar on a moped. The two unlikely friends become firm allies, and together try to overcome obstacles that few kids will ever encounter in their lives.
This book is filled with Eoin’s brilliant and uniquely-Irish humour, and is one that I read and re-read until its spine fell apart!
The sequel Benny & Babe is also, in my opinion, an instant classic.
The hilarious debut novel from one of the world's favourite children's authors. Benny Shaw, a young sporting fanatic, is forced to leave his beloved Wexford, home of all his heroes, and move with his family to Tunisia! How will he survive in a place like this? Then he teams up with Omar, and a madcap friendship between the two boys leads to trouble, crazy escapades, a unique way of communicating, and heartbreaking challenges.
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
As a kid, I loved books of all shapes and sizes, especially those written by Irish authors. They made me feel like there was a chance of my own dream coming true – that I would walk into my local bookshop and see a book with my name on the cover. In the last twenty years, we've seen an explosion of new Irish authors making their mark on the world of children’s literature. Don’t get me wrong, I adore leprechauns, and many of the classic Irish books that have been loved by previous generations. But there’s a crop of brand new Irish authors making some incredible work, and it’s time to give them some love!
I’m super-passionate about giving young people the window into the world that they deserve – in fact, I wrote a whole book about journalism and fake news for kids.
David McCullagh, with this book, has flung that window wide open.
David will be familiar to Irish audiences as the anchor of the main evening news programme on RTE, but he’s managed to do the almost-impossible with this book. Namely: communicating the world of politics to kids in a way that doesn’t patronise or talk down to young people.
This beautifully-illustrated book explains some quite complicated concepts clearly with real-word examples and some excellent tongue-in-cheek humour.
I’ll be forcing it on my wee nephew as soon as he’s old enough!
Join political buff David McCullagh and illustrator Graham Corcoran as they guide you through all the things that make our country work. Why do we have a president and a Taoiseach? What is the Seanad and why can only some citizens vote in its elections? Who makes the rules for Ireland and how are they enforced? And what do we do if we want to change them?
Learn what it means to be a citizen and the positive role you can play by helping others, protecting what works and creating change in the world you live in.
As a kid, I loved books of all shapes and sizes, especially those written by Irish authors. They made me feel like there was a chance of my own dream coming true – that I would walk into my local bookshop and see a book with my name on the cover. In the last twenty years, we've seen an explosion of new Irish authors making their mark on the world of children’s literature. Don’t get me wrong, I adore leprechauns, and many of the classic Irish books that have been loved by previous generations. But there’s a crop of brand new Irish authors making some incredible work, and it’s time to give them some love!
I’m a sucker for tongue-in-cheek humour, the sort of dry, straight-faced joke that is so skilfully woven into a narrative or a character’s personality that you’re almost not sure if it was meant to be funny.
Alex Barclay has that skill in truckloads, and uses it to tremendous effect in this book. It’s a ripping yarn about a young girl on the search for her dad – except, it’s about a lot more than that.
It embraces the absurd and the vividly real in equal measure, all told through the eyes of a beautifully-crafted main character.
I can’t think of another book like it – it is utterly, uniquely brilliant.
The hilarious and deeply moving diary novel from bestselling author Alex Barclay - this might just be the funniest book ever to make you cry your eyes out.
This is the diary of me, Ellery Brown, aged fifteen and a half. I'm supposed to use it to record my feelings about my mum, since she died. So why do I keep thinking about who my dad might be, instead . . . ?
I have so much STUFF to think about - including a whole new life in Ireland. So why can I not stop thinking about my DAD? Especially…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
As a kid, I loved books of all shapes and sizes, especially those written by Irish authors. They made me feel like there was a chance of my own dream coming true – that I would walk into my local bookshop and see a book with my name on the cover. In the last twenty years, we've seen an explosion of new Irish authors making their mark on the world of children’s literature. Don’t get me wrong, I adore leprechauns, and many of the classic Irish books that have been loved by previous generations. But there’s a crop of brand new Irish authors making some incredible work, and it’s time to give them some love!
Back to the non-fiction shelf for my last pick – which is a whistle-stop tour through the Irish sportswomen who have achieved greatness, but perhaps not always the recognition that they deserve.
Jacqui Hurley and her crack squad of illustrators have curated a book full of brilliant role models for all the young women out there who dream of representing their county, their country, or even those who just need some inspiration to go out on the pitch and do their best.
It’s essential reading for any young sports fan, no matter who they are!
Irish sportswomen have been breaking the mould for a long time. From Maeve Kyle becoming Ireland’s first female Olympian in 1956, to motorsport pioneer Rosemary Smith breaking the land-speed record in 1978. Through the 1990s and 2000s we had world champions in Sonia O’Sullivan, Derval O’Rourke, and Olive Loughnane. More recently, the success of Katie Taylor, Kellie Harrington, and Annalise Murphy has kept Irish sportswomen on the global map. But amidst their success stories, the battle for recognition continues. Female athletes still receive only a small proportion of the media coverage their male counterparts receive. This book will break the…
I’ve always been fascinated by American history and have clear memories of celebrating America’s bicentennial as a child. I have twenty-two Revolutionary Patriots in my family history, and I am most proud of my 6x-great grandmother, Anna Asbury Stone, for her bravery and daring during the winter of 1778. I did extensive genealogical research to learn about her, her family, and her circumstances before writing Answering Liberty’s Call: Anna Stone’s Daring Ride to Valley Forge.
Bound is set in the years prior to the American Revolution, and highlights the difficulties faced by girls and women indentured servants. Alice and her family set out for America from England, but when her mother and brothers die during the voyage, Alice’s father decides he cannot keep her and sells her as an indentured servant upon reaching Boston. Alice should have had a middle-class upbringing, but instead, she becomes chattel. The scenes of abuse in this book are stark, but it helps to shed light on the sufferings of the disenfranchised and the helpless. Alice’s determination will inspire.
An indentured servant finds herself bound by law, society, and her own heart in this novel set in colonial Cape Cod from the author of acclaimed The Widow’s War.
Indentured servant Alice Cole barely remembers when she was not “bound”, first to the Morton family, then to their daughter Nabby—her companion since childhood—when she wed. But Nabby’s new marriage is not happy, and when Alice finds herself torn between her new master and her old friend, she runs away to Boston. There she meets a sympathetic widow named Lyddie Berry and her lawyer companion, Eben Freeman. Impulsively stowing away on…
Growing up in Plymouth, MA, I was steeped in the history of the Pilgrims, eventually working as a tour guide at Plimoth-Patuxet. After I retired as professor emerita from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I wrote and published a series of mysteries. That experience and my New England background buoyed my confidence that I could write about a Pilgrim woman, keeping true to the history of the Plimoth Colony. The story of Mary Allerton Cushman’s lifewas the result. It was long-listed for the Devon and Cornwall International Novel Prize.
James Deetz was an American anthropologist and his wife, a cultural historian. Their book was the result of studying Plymouth Colony court transcripts, wills, probate listings, and rare firsthand accounts, and then combining the facts with archeological evidence from various sites in Plymouth. This book shows a reality of the Pilgrims and Pilgrim life very different from the straight-laced, nearly mythical images from the 18th and 19th centuries: an all too human group who wore bright clothing, drank, believed in witches, had premarital sex and adulterous affairs, and committed petty and serious crimes. This book is informative and eye-opening.
This title sets out to debunk the longstanding ideas about the life of the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Colony. The authors describe the arrival of the English settlers, the early years of the settlement, and the myths which have developed since.
I write about the often contentious role of religion in U.S. history, from modern evangelicals to nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints to the Pilgrims of the Mayflower. In many history books these religious men and women function either as saints or sinners. Instead of resorting to caricatures, it’s worth taking the time to get to know people of the past in all the marvelous strangeness of their beliefs, practices, and habits. I am a professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
If you want to learn about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, the most essential source is Mayflower passenger and longtime governor William Bradford’s own history. Bradford explains the circumstances that led a portion of his congregation to transplant themselves to the New World, then goes year by year through the colony’s first three decades. His annals aren’t dry, though. Bradford also has a wicked sense of humor. If would-be colonists weren’t tough enough for what awaited them in New England, they should remain across the Atlantic “till at least they be mosquito proof.” You shouldn’t only read Bradford. He’s a partisan in this contentious history, after all. But you shouldn’t pass on one of the great works of seventeenth-century American non-fiction.
I remember the first time I stepped onto a sailing ship and that was the full-size replica of the Cutty Sark at Greenwich, London. The younger me descended below decks and started to imagine the enormity of risking everything on an expedition into the unknown. Since that time, I’ve become an eighteenth-century scholar, able to channel my wonder at the age of sail into researching, teaching, writing, and broadcasting about many aspects of the period. I hope the books on this list help you journey all over the globe with a sense of what it was like to trust your life to a self-contained floating world heading into unchartered waters.
Philbrick had me from his opening sentence: “We all want to know how it was in the beginning.” He makes a familiar history fresh, asking how fifty years of peace at Plymouth Rock between the Mayflower Pilgrims and local Wampanoags could end in war.
Within this overarching theme, it’s the small details I remember, such as how Philbrick interviewed Captain Alan Villiers who sailed a 1957 replica of the Mayflower. In a violent transatlantic storm, Villiers tested a Jacobean sailing technique that hadn’t been tried for centuries, furling the sails and securing the helm into the wind. Its boxy shape kept Mayflower II perfectly balanced, bobbing upright in the gale. With accounts like this, I felt Philbrick had done his research and gave real credibility to his description of the voyage and its aftermath.
Nathaniel Philbrick, bestselling author of 'In the Heart of the Sea', reveals the darker side of the Pilgrim fathers' settlement in the New World, which ultimately erupted in bloody battle some fifty years after they first landed on American soil.
Behind the quaint and pious version of the Mayflower story usually taught in American primary schools is a tumultuous and largely untold tale of violence, subterfuge and epic drama.
For amidst the friendships and co-operation that sprang up between the settlers and indigenous people, whose timely assistance on more than one occasion rescued the Pilgrims from otherwise certain death, a…
I’m a big-time fantasy reader, and I’ve always loved non-human characters in fiction, whether it was The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast. It never sat right with me that the Beast becomes human when I got to understand his vulnerability in monster form; I hated that Ariel wanted boring human legs. I was a romance novel hater for a long time, too, because I thought they were repetitive (and mostly straight). Finding queer indie romance that embraced these monsters and explored what makes them monstrous caused a huge shift in the way I interpret all relationships in literature, and it definitely influenced my choice to write monster romance.
I couldn’t leave out one of my favorite monsters of all time: dragons. Also, I just love secondary-world fantasy, especially the kind that has important themes like the effects of imperialism and that are set in a shifting palace full of magical rooms.
This book beautifully executes one of my favorite relationship dynamics in fiction: the dragon love interest starts out ice cold and very gradually warms up to the main character as they get closer, and they both overcome their past traumas as their romance grows deeper. That’s the good stuff!
Hi, I’m E.C. Glynn. I love writing stories that tackle the messiness of religious societies and belief systems through a fantasy lens. What qualifies me for such an endeavour? Well, with a Master's in International Relations, a decade as a Recovering Catholic, a career as an Officer in the Army, and an unhealthy fascination with cults, I think that’s not a bad place to start for developing a nuanced and interesting perspective on the topic. I am a very picky reader and need to read books that have beautiful prose, interesting worlds, complex and convoluted concepts, and believable dialogue to enjoy my reading experience.
I read this book over a decade ago, and it still has its claws in me.
The writing prose is lyrical and gorgeous. The world-building, centered around a blend of Christianity and Jewish cultures and religions, is beautiful and spellbinding. The characters are each so creatively written, and the sex – oh my god – is just both tastefully and devastatingly written.
This book is a cult classic. I have recommended it to others so many times over the years.
The lush epic fantasy that inspired a generation with a single precept: Love As Thou Wilt
The first book in the Kushiel's Legacy series is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. A world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, deposed rulers and a besieged Queen, a warrior-priest, the Prince of Travelers, barbarian warlords, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess...all seen through the unflinching eyes of an unforgettable heroine.
A nation born of angels, vast and intricate and surrounded by danger... a woman born to servitude, unknowingly given access to the secrets of the realm...
