Every author dreams of producing the kind of book that can maintain its freshness, its sheer entertainment value for fifty years. One such book is ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, by Harper Lee. Irish Publishing News featured an article from The Guardian last week, discussing the book’s enduring popularity (that’s another phrase authors dream of: enduring popularity). It is the…
I found this piece of video – ‘Big Bang Big Boom’ by Blu – on David Maybury’s blog. It’s a really clever combination of live action film taken in some inner city sites, along with animation using all sorts of different techniques, to describe the birth of the universe and the evolution of mankind (sort of). It’s full of…
From today, until the 28th of August, you can see some of my original artwork at the Garter Lane Arts Centre on O’Connell Street in Waterford. I’m taking part in a children’s book illustration exhibition, entitled ‘Enchanted’, along with Niamh Sharkey, Adrienne Geoghan, Annie West and Bruce Ingman. Adrienne is also doing a couple of workshops there on the…
Honestly, the stuff people get up to. I was sent a link the other day to this piece featured on the BBC News site, about a guy named Mark Suppes, who has built a nuclear reactor in a warehouse in New York. That’s right . . . he’s built himself his own little nuclear reactor. And he’s not alone….
It’s a constant refrain of mine that there’s a problem with the way boys read. Girls have their own problems too (and delight in discussing those and many other problems at length). But when it comes to reading across the full range of fiction, lads are bit, well . . . squeamish. This is a particular problem as boys…
Some time ago, Weird Wide News alerted the public to a fiendish crime – the disappearance of five llamas (and three goats) from a circus in Meath. I wondered if it could be the work of the Kleptoes, who had been spotted in Galway, headed east. Lo and behold, one of our roving reporters (our shortest one, in fact)…
We were in Portlaoise last weekend, and I took my daughter to a playground in a small town park, while her mum and brother were off watching a football match. She was too young to watch the game and too old – and too mad – to sit still on our laps. The playground was a decent one; the…
For anyone who’s wondering what the process of creating ‘The Vile Desire to Scream’ was like, I’ve written an article on it for the Irish Publishing News blog. There’s been some great feedback on the book, and I’d like to give a big thanks to the hundreds of people who’ve downloaded it so far. Please feel free to hand…
It’s taken me a few days to get round to posting this, but I was at the Children’s Books Ireland Conference in the National Gallery last weekend, where I got to hear some excellent talks. The conference was kicked off with a thoughtful and inspiring inaugural speech by our new Children’s Laureate, Siobhan Parkinson, who hailed the great success…
Maybe it’s because of the fact that I put my back out recently. Or it might be because I did a talk on (and drawing of) Dorian Gray in Ballymun Library, and in an attempt to engage the minds of those cagey teenagers, I spoke about how we age and how, even in our teens, life has already left…