A few posts back, I mentioned a guy named Mike Matas and his new company called Push Pop Press. A former Apple employee, he and his team are developing some fairly snazzy interactive books for the iPad and iPhone. They’ve been getting a lot of attention, and it seems it has served them well. I found a link to…
Back in August, I posted about the launch of the MS Readathon. RTE’s Elev8 were there to film it and the piece was broadcast yesterday. You can have a look at it here. The whole clip is twenty minutes long, and the Readathon bit is about fourteen minutes in, so you might want to skip on to it if…
I was in the lovely setting of Skerries last night, for the opening of the Enchanted Exhibition in Skerries Mills. This is the fifth and last venue to host this collection of work by Irish illustrators, and it’s only on until the 25th of September, so if you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re interested in this kind of…
I’m looking at body bits for this post. And I’m going to start with a book-related story which grabbed my attention a while back: According to an article in ‘The Telegraph’ a guy named Marcel Kamp, of the Neurosurgical Department at Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf, has led a team in a project examining the number and severity of brain…
My stepson and I were at the launch of this year’s MS READaTHON on Tuesday, at the Winding Stair Bookshop in Dublin. A big event packed into a small shop, the place was stuffed with authors, kids, PR people, photographers, television people, children’s entertainers, and folks from the MS Society and the book trade . . . along with…
I’ve been struggling to keep up with all the reading I want to do, mostly because of all the reading I feel I have to do – for research for work, or because I’ve had a book loaned to me, or because I’m going to be meeting the author, or have met them, or I’m reviewing something (I do…
For anyone interested in writing for kids, there are still a couple of places left on the online course I’ll be running for Creative Writing Ink in September-October. Here’s the outline of the course: I will cover the basics of storytelling and the specific aspects of writing for children and young adults. Areas that will be looked at include:…
The illegal copying and distribution of digital books. We knew this was coming – in fact, it’s been possible for a while. Ever since book production went digital, and distribution went online. But thanks to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and some handy pieces of dodgy software, any git with a smidgeon of computer savvy can now rip off somebody…
These are aren’t necessarily my favourite films from the last few months, but they’ve stuck in my head, which I suppose is as good a reason as any for talking about them. I’m going to start with a movie, simply entitled ‘Monsters ‘. I just sort of picked this one off the shelf in Xtra-Vision. It seemed to be…
I found out recently that, in the UK, libraries and schools are starting to bring in policies that demand people like me – who go in to do storytelling, talks and drawings – have public liability cover of £5 million. I’m not sure what I could do to a person or property during one of my sessions that would…