Monsters in Meath

It's Children's Book Festival time and this week I visited libraries around Co. Meath. I meet lots of school groups and enjoyed it a lot. Hope they did too.


Doing my thing in Slane.


One of the school groups I meet in Ashbourne.

One thing I love about meeting young readers is the surprising angles they take on my work. Often a boy or girl will have paid extraordinarily close attention to someone I considered to be a minor character. Or they will have thought hard about some fleeting detail. This is always an eye-opener for me.

Next week for the Children's Book Festival I am the Ballyroan Library in Rathfarnham, Dublin.

Yarn in Barn

Here’s me talking to a gathering of young and not-so-young in Dublin lately. The event was held in a barn and everyone sat on hay bales.


Thanks to Aoife of Children's Books Ireland for the photograph

It reminded of when, as a boy, myself and a friend slept a night in a barn of a local farm. My friend told his parents that he was staying in my house and I told my parents that I was staying in his. We learned that, if you’re going to sleep in a hay barn, you should bring lots of water as all that straws dries out the air terribly. Our throats were dry as deserts by morning. For provisions, all we brought with us was a block of marzipan.

Dublin Events

Bookworms Invade Airfield on 14 August. Airfield is in Dundrum, Dublin. I will be having book events in the Grey Barn at 11:30am, 1:15pm and 3:00pm. The events will be suitable for 9 years and up.



There’s plenty of other things happening on the day in Airfield, click here to take a look.