Jonny's Work

I've decorated my office with a few of Jonny Duddle's brilliant illustrations. These are the images that were used on my book covers.

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.

Kid’s Lit Quiz

I will be a guest at The Kids' Lit Quiz which will be held at Wellington College in Belfast on Thursday the 10th of November. It is an annual international reading quiz for students aged 10-13 years. 26 teams from 19 different schools across Northern Ireland will be competing for reading honours. I’m told that previous quizzes have had rounds on everything from “pigs, primates and publishers' logos to Harry Potter, Dr Seuss and famous first lines." All regions of the United Kingdom take part along with New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, the USA and China. The regional heat winners will compete in the UK Final at Warwick University in December. The UK champions will then travel to New Zealand to take on the International teams who will be battling it out for the coveted World Title. There are all sorts of prizes to be won and, of course, there’s the glory.



I am bringing an additional prize for the Northern Irish quiz, it is a drawing in a frame and will be presented along with one of my books. It will be awarded to the winner of a Monster drawing competition. I drew this picture when beginning to write The Badness of Ballydog. When writing I often sketch props and characters to help me get a clear idea of them in my head. This particular picture is of May looking over the side of the Sunny Buoy at a certain leatherback turtle. A turtle who turns out to be important in the story.

I look forward to partaking in the day, testing my knowledge of youth literature and seeing all the student’s artwork.

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.

Make Mine a Monster

This is what I got for Christmas. It’s a wonderful monster kit. These kits are created by the knitting ninja Donna Wilson and it encourages, in fact requires, you to use your imagination. There is very little in the way of instruction or direction. Every kit is made up of a different selection of materials and threads. You use the bits and pieces to make your own original monster.


1.


2.

This central piece is pre-made and comes with the kit. Turn it inside out and stuff it (stuffing supplied) via the single opening. I did not like the shiny pink side that mine came with, preferring the carpet-like darker side. But this did give me an idea. The pink side would be my beast’s sensitive underbelly. The creature would be a crawler. Or, better still, a swimmer.


3.

I gave it flippers at each corner. Then some nasty teeth. My kit came with several red pieces. A tongue! Let’s call it the Big-Tongued Platy-Beast, distant relation of the Australian platypus (the platypus is in fact a very small monster that has evolved a shy temperament in the last four million years. Not many people know that).


4.

Eyes, fins, eyebrows … Done! But hang on … I still have a few pieces of red material left.


5.

Now I’m done. The Three-Tongued Platy-Beast. On the box Donna Wilson suggests you take a digital photo of your monster, email it to her and she’ll put it on her website. I wonder if she'll like it.

Monster Minds

Hello to all the kids of Belfast’s Lower Ormeau who I meet with recently. They were all taken out for the morning to Queen’s University and shown around its hallowed corridors. It’s just like Hogwarts, was the general consensus. In the university’s Great Hall I gave them a presentation on … what else? Monsters.


Thanks to Paul Maddern for this photograph and the next two below. This is me, being asked a tough question.

In the week leading up to their visit two staff members had been leading creative writing and drawing classes with them. The theme was monsters and they created whole books of brilliant drawings. It was great to see them.


One example from the student’s own monster book.


Another example. A monster with a pet monster. What a good idea! I may have to steal it. It is a quick, scrawled, drawing but I think that makes the creatures seem even scarier. Maybe the kid who drew was so frightened by their own creation that they just couldn’t colour it.

On the internet, an artist called Dave Devries has started a website called Monster Engine. The galleries there began with this one simple question. “What would a child’s drawing look like if it were painted realistically?” Below are some results.


Boo! Example one.


Another strange beast.


A dangerous ninja, with what looks like a vicious side-kick in a box. Or is she a prisoner?


Dave Devries's version. Not a prisoner, she kicks her way out.

Click here to visit Monster Engine.

About Me (No.1)

My name is Garrett Carr. I grew up in a town a bit like Ballydog and now live in a city a bit like Hardglass. I was born in the summer of 1975. By the time I was ten I was obsessed with monsters. Day and night I would be found drawing them.


A drawing from my childhood that I discovered in the attic


This is me a few weeks ago, hunting a monster

Professionally, I come from a background in illustration. I specialised in the creation of visual tools for education in health and law, using images to reach out to the young, or across language barriers. I did that kind of work for governmental agencies in my native Ireland and for development agencies in Latin America.

There is more random information about me on my page on my publisher’s website.

At this link is a recording of an interview with me about The Badness of Ballydog. It is quite long, early 20 minutes. I am sorry to say about half of that time is me going, ‘ummm.’

Here is a video of me reading a short extract from The Badness of Ballydog.