Ballydog has a Good Day

The Badness of Ballydog has been shortlisted for the Heart of Hawick Children’s Book Award 2011. Hawick is in the Scotland/England border region and deciding which book wins the award involves ten schools in the area. 600 students will soon begin reading and reviewing the shortlist and will vote next year.

A brilliant addition to the usual book prizes is that students are able to win awards for the best-written reviews. Next May someone will be voted “Best young reviewer of the year.” So everybody gets a go at entering their writing for honours.



Students also make short animations based on the books they’ve read. Last year children from six primary schools worked with an animator at Hawick Public Library to make the above trailer. It is for a book called Dog Lost by Ingrid Lee. In a month I happen to have a book coming out called Lost Dogs, that’s a good enough excuse to show their trailer on this blog.

Here’s the whole 2011 shortlist:

Meteorite Strike by A G Taylor.
Wilma Tenderfoot and the Case of the Frozen Hearts by Emma Kennedy.
The Chess Piece Magician by Douglas Burton.
The Great Hamster Massacre by Katie Davies.
The Badness of Ballydog by Garrett Carr.

Thank you to everyone involved for the nomination of my book. Click here to visit the award’s website.

Hot Spots of Britain and Ireland

I have a few solid weeks of writing ahead of me, then I am back on the road. My next events are a couple of appearances at the Wigtown Book festival, in Scotland. I will be in praise of monsters at the Quaker Meeting house on Saturday the 2nd of October. The organisers tell me they have something else planned for me too, I’m not sure where or exactly when.

Wigtown is in south-west Scotland.


Cloughey.

I look forward to meeting some of the pupils of Kirkistown Primary School in Cloughey, County Down on October 6th. At the moment they are having a ‘Narrative Month,’ which sounds like a great idea to me. Such things did not occur in my school when I was a kid. I recall we had a "Let a Bigot Teach History” month when a rather elderly reserve teacher came in and cursed the English for four weeks.

But I shouldn’t complain too much because the following week I return to my home town. County Donegal is having ‘Wainfest,’ with venues spread throughout the county. My first event is in Ballydog … opps, I mean Killybegs. Come along to the town library at 10:30am on the 11th of October if monsters are your thing. If I get out alive I will then be going “in through” (as we say in that part of the world) to Kilcar for an event at 1:30pm.


Rush hour, Kilcar.

The following day, the 12th of October, I’ll be having two events on Aran Island, taking the 10:00am ferry from Burton Port.

13th of October, find me in Moville Library at 10:30am and Buncrana Library at 1:30pm.

14th of October, Na Rosa Library, 10:30am.

Last, for the moment, I will be joining the Children’s Book Festival in Dublin on the 19th of October. I'll having events in the County Library Tallaght at 10:30am and 12 noon.

Phew …

Review Round Up

Lost Dogs will be released on the 1st of November. The book website Bookbag has been the first to review it. Read their opinion here.

There are plenty of reviews of The Badness of Ballydog floating around online. To keep things handy and tidy I list and link to many of them below.

The Times, Verbal Magazine, Ireland 4 kids, The Irish Times, Write Away, The Irish Independent and Bookblabbers. Readers have also put up reviews at Goodreads and on Amazon.