Blackboard Monster

This beast was a group creation. A bunch of young people and myself dreamed it up in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, earlier this year.

May the Odds ...

One of my duties at a local heat of the Kids' Lit Quiz was to judge the Best Mascot. The winner was ...

Congratulations to St. Paul's High School, Bessbrook, Northern Ireland.

The Deinotherium

The Deinotherium (dy-noh-THEER-ee-um) was a relative of the elephant. They could grow to be 4.5 metres tall. This creature had the misfortune to become extinct about two million years ago, leaving the elephant and the extinct-yet-familiar mammoth to dictate what members of the Elephantidae family ought to look like. Here I'm talking especially about the tusks.

Deinotherium's tusks point back and downwards, not up and forwards like the elephant's. Writing about its bones, people have called this tusk arrangement 'curious,' 'freaky,' even 'comical.' Poor old Deinotherium is stuck being the weird one.



Let's not forget that it need not have been so. If Deinotherium had got a bit luckier, if continents had drifted this way instead of that, if the timings of ice ages had been different, then this creature might have survived into our age. Instead the elephant could well have taken the hit and become extinct. Then we'd be going to zoos or circuses to see the delightful Deinotherium. And in the prehistoric displays of museums, it would be the tusks of the elephant that would make us say, 'weird.' 'Those tusks pointing up and forwards,' we'd say, 'they just look wrong.'

Meet Ze Monsta

September 8th is European Heritage Open Day, historic buildings everywhere will be opening their doors to the general public. In Belfast, the Linen Hall Library is taking part, even though its doors are open most days anyway. At 1pm I will be presenting True Monsters of the Deep. It's a "lecture" for anyone from 10 years old to 100 years old.

People older than that might find the creatures a bit much for their hearts, although you're welcome if you're prepared to take the risk.



The title of this blog post is the title of a song by PJ Harvey. I'm listening to her right now.

Monsters from Carrick-on-Shannon

Hello to everyone I meet in Carrick-on-Shannon. It was the town's first children's book festival and I was glad to take part. Among other things, we drew some monsters.


Keeping watching the depths!

We worked together to draw a monster on a giant blackboard as well. I'll post up a photo of that one later.

Donegal Catch

I know The Badness of Ballydog is not the first time trawlers, lighthouses and seagulls have been put together but I like to think that the package designers at Donegal Catch might have read it. After all, Ballydog is in Donegal.

Goodbye Cara

I am sad to hear about the death of Cara Cunningham, a friend from Kilcar, Co. Donegal. He must have been approaching 90 years of age. After Cara moved into a new bungalow a few metres up the lane, he rented out his little thatched cottage, the house he grew up in. I'd sometimes take the cottage for a week to work on my novels. A fair bit of LOST DOGS and DEEP DEEP DOWN was written at the kitchen table, under the small square window.

Photo by Marie Carr in 2011.

The cottage had hardly changed since Cara was a boy. It had a cast-iron range, holy pictures on the wall and only one electric socket in the whole place. He always thatched the roof himself although grant aid was available to help people maintain such traditions. He dismissed the idea of applying for grants as if that would be some kind of affront to his self-reliance. I also suspect that he was not a man for filling out forms.

Cara often wore a big woolly hat, despite having a good head of hair. During my visits I would sometimes drive him to Killybegs, where he went to get it trimmed. His hair was in a 1950s style which actually looked retro-hip. In his youth, Cara was considered one of the most handsome men in Kilcar.

It was best to rent Cara's cottage in the winter. I'd bring my own heaters although Cara would always supply a generous amount of turf as well. You were guaranteed to have the place to yourself in January or February. In summer, someone else might show up and Cara could never turn anyone away. I'd come back and find a couple of German backpackers had moved in for the night. Once, I was sitting outside the front door with just such a backpacker. She lit up a cigarette. Cara had a fear of burning embers from the tip of a cigarette flying up into the thatch and setting it alight. He asked us to go indoors. That was Cara's. A house where you weren't allowed to smoke outside and had to go inside.

In the Irish language, Cara means friend.

Minding the Baby

Kid's writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak died recently. His book Where the Wild Things Are has stoked up millions of imaginations since it was first published in 1963. There are a lot of monsters in that book but they are a jolly lot, fond of a good loud rumpus. For the SCARY Sendak you could look at his illustrations for another book, Outside Over There.



Here's a picture that leaves a chill. Hooded goblins are stealing away a baby girl while her big sister is practicing the french horn. I don't think it's the goblins that are the scary thing about this image. It's not even the expression of terror on the face of the baby. The ice replica the goblins have left in place of the child is spooky but I don't think it's the scariest thing here either.

The most chilling part of the picture is the distant look on the face of the older girl, utterly absorbed in her music practice and failing to notice what is happening behind her back. Her blank expression feels like a warning. Terrible things can happen just through inattention or distraction. It's a frightening thing to realise becuase we all get distracted sometimes. We will probably never meet evil hooded goblins, but we might forget to look out for those we care about at some vital moment. This picture is a stern warning; take care, mind the baby.

100,000 Lights Floating Downriver

During Tokyo's Hotaru Festival lately 100,000 illuminated blue LEDs were released in the city's river. The solar-powered spheres bobbed their way down the river, drawn in the flow. They looked like the milky way or the freaky phosphorescence you can encounter in southern oceans. The glowing spheres were later caught downstream by giant nets although I like to think that one or two got away and are now exploring the Pacific.

Fig 1.

Fig 2. Photos by jeremy v, makure and ajpscs.

Serious Jellyfish

This photograph is doing the rounds on the internet lately. The floating creature is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish, a real creature but this photo is a fake. The diver has been photoshopped in to make the jellyfish seem huge.

Fake

Real

This manipulation makes me mad. It seems to suggest that nature is not amazing enough by itself, it needs to be meddled with. But nature is plenty amazing enough already. The Lion's Mane Jellyfish can get to be nearly 8 feet in diameter. This ought to be enough for anyone, and with their streaming stingers they can be up to 120 feet long.

Monsters Attack Belfast

For the Belfast Children's Festival this year I will be reading from my books and talking to readers at No Alibis Bookstore on Friday 16 March 6.30pm. I'm "Back by popular demand" apparently.



Come along if you're, roughly, over 10 years of age. It's free and you don't need to book.

Details over on the festival website.

Monsters Attack Dún Laoghaire

On Saturday March 10th Don Conroy, Judi Curtin, Oisín McGann, Sarah Webb and myself will be spending the morning with readers in the County Hall, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. The organisers have used my latest cover for the poster, you can check it out here and get lots of info about the event (it's a PDF file).



Tickets are available from the Pavilion Theatre Booking Office (01) 231 2929 or visit their website, www.paviliontheatre.ie.

Right now Inis Magazine are having a competition to win a family ticket to the event. Click here and answer the question. CLUE: To this question, as to most things in life, Garrett Carr is not the answer.

Mystery Creature

Can any reader identify this creature by its skull? This is a beast that is still alive in the world today. No other clues, not for a while anyway. Give it your best shot in the comments section below. Thank you.


Do you recognise this real beast?

Dark Side of the Moomin

Most stories start with a kick-factor, an event that sets of the action. For example, detective stories usually start with the discovery of a dead body. Tove Jansson found a simple and haunting opener for Moominland Midwinter, my favorite of the Moomin books. Moomins hibernate during the winter and never normally see the cold season, never normally encounter the snow or long nights. However this particular winter young Moomintroll wakes up in the middle of his hibernation and is unable go back to sleep.

And so the tale begins. He leaves the family den and meets the winter creatures of the valley.


Moomintroll visits his sleeping mother.

One thing I love about this book is its atmosphere of cold-weather loneliness. Moomintroll meets lots of characters but they come and go with long periods between visits. Nobody talks much, everyone is isolated, traveling alone. His "friends" are not too friendly, they have other things on their minds. There is much reference to darkness, to everything being held in a kind of icy death, albeit a temporary one.

Moomintroll sometimes goes to his mother, who is still hibernating underground, and asks her questions. By talking in her sleep "from the depths of her womanly understanding of all that preserves tradition", Moominmamma is able to help her son. Here Jansson is softening the blow for younger readers. Without a few kind words from Moominmamma the book's atmosphere of winter melancholy could get genuinely upsetting. This indicates how well-written this book is.


The Groke.

The icy Groke is a wonderful creation. A lonesome wanderer, she is attracted to light and warmth but doomed to extinguish it by drawing close. Moomintroll at first fears her, but then comes to pity her. He learns a lot of other things that winter but Jansson steers away from putting big lessons in her plot. Moomintroll does not have any revelations, he does not seem overly changed by the time spring comes and we reach the end of the story. His growth is slow and gradual, without high risk or climaxes, an ordinary childhood.

As the thaw arrives Moomintroll is at last able to see familiar things emerge from under the snow. In a beautiful bit of dialogue, he makes a complaint to an acquaintance, Too-Ticky. Moomintroll tells her that she should have been more supportive of him when he first found himself awake, alone and unhappy.

‘It’d have been such a comfort. Remember, I said once: “There were a lot of apples here.” And you just said: “But now here’s a lot of snow.” Didn’t you understand that I was melancholy?”

Too-Ticky shrugged her shoulders. ‘One has to discover everything for oneself,’ she replied. ‘And get over it all alone.’