The Children’s Book Festival is in full swing and the sun was shining when I drove down to Wicklow town this week to talk in to a wonderful bunch of kids from 4th class in the Wicklow Educate Together School.
I was delighted to discover that they were all reading my books but are also mad on writing stories too… the perfect combination.
We had a lovely time in the amazing library on Wicklow’s main street with its magnificent view out over Wicklow’s Harbour. .I always love being near the sea and the time passed far too quickly.
Afterwards I drove to Greystones to have lunch with a friend in The Beach Bar, one of my favourite spots as it overlooks the harbour there.
Happy Halloween and have lots of fun dressing up and reading spooky stories.
October is always the busiest month in every Irish Children’s Writer’s calendar as we as we travel around Libraries, Schools and Arts Centres meeting brilliant young readers and writers to talk about books during Ireland’s annual Childrens Book Festival.
I was delighted to launch the ‘One Book, One County Project ‘with crowds of schools in Monaghan who will all read ‘Under the Hawthorn Tree’ and also get to visit the Exhibition based around the book in the Ulster American Folk Park, in Omagh. This is a wonderful creative initiative by Monaghan County Libraries which I am so happy to be involved with.
Then I was off on the train to Mayo, where I visited Castlebar Library, Ballina Library, and went out along The Wild Atlantic Way to the beautiful seaside town of Belmullet to talk in their lovely Arts Centre ‘ Aras Inis Gluaire’ with its views of the sea.
I met some amazing classes from lots of schools and was also delighted when a few came in costume to meet me. It was a very busy few days but I had a wonderful time.
Thanks to the kind librarians Maria Cunningham, Kate Healy, and Angela Carey of the Arts Centre for looking after me so well.
Hip, Hip… Hurray….The lovely new Library in Stillorgan has just opened and I popped in for a visit as I was so curious to see it. Libraries are my favourite spot and I spend a lot of time in them… This one is close to where I live.
Everyone has been waiting for this, as the old prefab style library behind the old Stillorgan Bowling Alley closed down a good few years ago, with the library moving across the road to a much smaller space upstairs in the Shopping Centre.
The large site was developed into apartments by private developers and Dunlaoghaire Rathdown County Council. At long last after all the years of speculation the Council’s apartments and Library are finished.
The library is a really nice, bright, well designed space, with a good children’s section on the ground floor and space for people to study and read and browse. There is a lift and stairs to the First floor, which has more study and reading spaces and lots of lovely new books shelves to fill. It is right in the hub of Stillorgan and was already busy with a lively story telling session for younger kids, with older students arriving in school uniforms to study.
We are blessed with great libraries in the County, with the flagship one in Dun Laoghaire overlooking the harbour and pier, and other ones are in Deansgrange, Blackrock, Shankill, Ballyogan and Dundrum.
Like everyone else, it is concerning to see that the latest published readership figures show that among teenagers and young people reading books for pleasure is going down. The vital and most important thing about libraries is to use them.
Celebrating 25 Years of ‘Under the Hawthorn Tree’ with Pat Donlon and Publisher Michael O”Brien in Smock Alley, Dublin.
A Sad Farewell to Dr Pat Donlon –An incredible woman
I have just returned from holidays to hear the sad news of the passing of Dr Patricia Donlon, the former director of the National Library of Ireland and renowned Children’s Literature expert.
Pat was such a special friend, full of joy with a real zest for life, highly intelligent, wise and always kind. We first met when I attended U.C.D’s Children’s Literature Course. She was a brilliant lecturer and passionate about the subject. We got talking and she asked why I was doing the course and I told her how much I loved and valued children’s literature and how I had recently began to write and make books for my own children. She persuaded me to show her my work and before I knew it she had told a picture book publisher about one of my books which much to my delight they decided to publish. I then told her I was writing a bigger book for my older daughter.
Pat was one of the first people to read ‘Under the Hawthorn Tree’ and though I had not really intended publishing it as I was nervous because it was set during the Great Irish Famine she persuaded me that I had to send it to a publisher as it deserved to be a book . That decision and advice would change the course of my life
By the time it came to be published Pat who had worked in the Chester Beatty Library, had been appointed to be the first female Director of the National Library of Ireland. It was a very prestigious appointment and Pat, like a breath of fresh air soon became a catalyst for change and innovation in its hallowed reading rooms.
She kindly offered to launch my book in the National Library on 23rd May 1990 which was huge honour for a new writer. She had started an initiative to ask Irish writers to donate their work and papers to the National Museum and I was privileged to give my manuscript to the library.
We became good friends over the years, with Pat always delighted to hear about new ideas for books, ready with good advice.
She relished every role she under took in state institutions and the arts, Director of The Tyrone Guthrie Centre Writers and Artists Retreat in Monaghan. She lectured for a while in Boston College and my husband and I stayed for a few wonderful days with her. Pat brought us to see the Kennedy Centre in Boston, a highlight of our American trip.
She and her late husband Phelim made a wonderful couple. He worked for the Arts Council and both had a deep love for the arts, music, theatre and literature but Pat’s passion was for Childrens books.
Over many years she collected them, both old and new, building a unique selection of Irish and international children’s classics and illustrations and created a wonderful collection in her home in Blackrock. Her collection is now housed in her beloved National Library of Ireland.
Pat sparkled and lit up every room she entered. I loved meeting her, talking to her, chatting on the phone. She will always be remembered with great fondness by all of us who had the good fortune to know her.
Only in Dalkey can it happen that we got to see and hear two of the world’s greatest inventors. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Jimmy Wales at the annual Dalkey Book Festival which brings even more crowds to this popular seaside village during its four day feast of books and writing from 18th to the 21st June.
This year’s festival includes authors Salman Rushdie, Sebastian Faulks, Katriona O’ Sullivan, Anne Enright and Jeanine Cummins. There are writing workshops for adults with Sarah Webb and Dave Rudden hosting ones for kids.
There is something for everyone in the festival as writers, economists and experts, journalists, commentators and great thinkers gather to explore and debate the state of the world we live in.
We had the great privilege to see and hear the incredible Sir Tim Berners- Lee, one of the greatest inventors in the world who created the World Wide Web and decided that the internet it should be free and available to everyone in the world. At 71 years of age he talked of his goal that it will reach the remaining 20% of people mostly in remote parts of Africa and poorer countries and help to improve their lives. He was interviewed by journalist Mark Little in the new big marquee overlooking the sea in the school grounds of Loreto Dalkey.
A fascinating and self- effacing man , he spoke of his relaxed childhood in England growing up with his mathematician parents who encouraged him enquire and explore and how he would build thing out of broken transistors and bits of old televisions. Finding himself eventually in Oxford much to his surprise and then CERN in Switzerland where he began to develop this invention that would transform the world insisting that CERN would agree to it being free having no commercial reward.
His invention has changed our world beyond recognition and although being used and adapted by some bad players, Berners -Lee still believes we have the power to change the web for the better. We were awed to be in the presence of such an intelligent, kind good man.
Afterwards we had dinner in one of our favourite restaurants Nova before joining the festival throngs in Finnegan’s pub.
Saturday the sun shone and we were back in the Marquee again for another memorable event. Jimmy Wales, the American inventor of Wikipedia was being interviewed by scientist Luke O’ Neill.
A second day with another great mind who wanted to open the world to free knowledge and information for ordinary people, with experts and researchers putting up information on all kinds of topics for users to discover and also enabling them to add to the information and update it as a host of Wikipeediars from all over the world continually add and check it.
As a writer I find it a huge resource for researching books and Jimmy explained how it is crowd funded and crowd sourced. They do ask at times for a very small donation but it is totally optional for people if they want to do so. It was incredible to see that Jimmy Wales has a similar mindset and goals as to Sir Tim Berners- Lee to continue working for the good of mankind unlike so many others.
Thank you so much to David McWilliams and his wife Sian Smyth and the Dalkey Book Festival team for giving us the incredible opportunity and privilege to hear these two great men speak.
