Back to Mad Grandadding

He has become an old friend. And though I can sometimes stumble or struggle when I first go back to an illustration style I haven’t used in a while, it doesn’t happen as much with Mad Grandad. Perhaps it’s because I’ve drawn him hundreds, if not thousands of times, both for the books and in sessions. Interesting then, that…

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A Brave New WexWorld

Sometimes I look back over my week (or for the purposes of this blog, the last twelve days) and I find it hard to remember what filled all that time. I know I had a couple of really good sessions with kids and parents in Clara Library in Offaly on the 18th. The rest of that week is a…

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Dark Imaginations

It’s probably fitting that I was reading some of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories over Halloween, as he was truly the grandaddy of modern horror. Any secondary school student can tell you that writing in the nineteenth century was a little wordy and long-winded for modern tastes. But with no television, radio, cinema or console games, they had plenty…

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Making Nasty Faces

As some children may be aware, it is Halloween. On Saturday night, Weird-Wide News received reports of ghosts, ghouls, zombies, vampires and other vile creatures stalking the streets of Ireland. Some fairies and princesses were spotted too, though they may not have lasted too long out in that chaos, magic wands or no magic wands. Houses need protection on…

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