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.

Readathon

Readathon is a scheme of sponsored reading for school kids. It aims to encourage reading among the young and, at the same time, earn money for charity. I think Readathon is a much better idea that sponsored walks we endured at school.


Everywhere Brough Girling goes, he brings cake.

Brough Girling, the founder of Readathon, was in Northern Ireland this week visiting some schools that have done particularly well in the scheme. Schools where the students read lots of books and gathered impressive amounts of money. I went with him to talk to the students about my work and life as a writer. We went to Ashfield Boys' School in Belfast and Cambridge House Grammer in Ballymena. In Ballymena I talked with my biggest group of young people ever, four-hundred and fifty.

Click here to visit the Readathon website.

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.