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Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850 (Sandpiper, 2005) is a compelling history of the horrific 19th-century Irish potato famine, a disaster with global implications. The book is 192 pages long, illustrated with period prints, maps, and a timeline, and including first-person anecdotes and accounts. For ages 12 and up. |
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Patricia Reilly Giff’s Nory Ryan’s Song (Yearling, 2002) is a fictionalized tale of the Irish potato famine, through the eyes of 12-year-old Nory Ryan, whose family has farmed and fished for generations on Ireland’s Maidin Bay. Then the famine strikes. Nory’s older sister leaves Ireland for New York; her father fails to return home from the sea; and Nory struggles to survive and ultimately to find her family a home in America. For ages 9 and up. |
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Nory’s story continues in Maggie’s Door (Yearling, 2005), in which Nory and her friend Sean Red Mallon, in alternating voices, tell the harrowing stories of their respective journeys to America; and Water Street (Yearling, 2008), set in 1875, and told in the alternating voices of Bird Mallon, Nory and Sean’s daughter, and her neighbor, young Thomas Neary. |
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Nory Ryan’s Song at Carol Hurst’s Children’s Literature Site has discussion questions and activities to accompany Nory Ryan’s Song, along with a list of related books. |
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Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Great Hunger (Penguin Books, 1991) is an excellent history of a terrible event. For older teenagers and adults. |
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At The History Place, Irish Potato Famine has a reader-friendly chronological history of the Famine with an extensive bibliography. For ages 12 and up. |
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From The Free Market, What Caused the Irish Potato Famine? discusses the economic and political forces behind the disaster. |
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Forced to Flee is a lesson plan on the Irish famine, targeted at grades 6-8.Also see Hunger on Trial from the Zinn Education Project. |
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From the BBC, The Irish Famine covers the history and causes of the Irish potato famine. |
