Mavis and Marge shortlisted for Irish Book Awards!

I found out late last night that my new book On The Road with Mavis and Marge has been shortlisted for the 2010 Irish Book Awards.

I am so thrilled to be on the shortlist for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards.

The winners will be decided by a mixture of public vote and literary experts. You can vote for your favourite here and will be entered into win €500 worth of Book Tokens. Please, please vote for On the Road.

As you can see BookFest and cave living is taking its toll on me; it may be my only way outta here!

Bookfest Fever!

What a week, Wednesday was Laundry at FilmBase. Here's me with my little devil, I mean my little brother Fergus at the opening night.

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Then it was off for the last of my Bookfest events, I travelled to so many places this month and thanks to all you doodlers out there, now hundreds of Mavis and Marge's are now free to wander.

Here's me in action doing my step-by-step how to draw Marge the chicken...

Here's are a few we did earlier...

Wowsers!

Brillo!

Fantastic!

People of Ireland I have to tell you to go visit your local Library, they are so brilliant. I had a mobile library in Swords that came once a week when I was a kid, and I thought that library was awesome.

But check out Abbeyleix Library,

they have a Gallery (which we took over...)

and a dedicated Children's floor. How amazing is that!

It was so wonderful to meet such dedicated teachers and librarians over the past couple of weeks. It makes a huge difference to an author when you arrive to be met with a friendly face and kids who are genuinely excited to meet you. Everyone gets so much more out of the event.

The children made the festival for me. I loved the way they take ownership of the author who visits, they truely make it into their Book Festival.

Hope to see you again next year!

Laundry airs again...

The Illustrators Guild of Ireland (IGI) have brought the hugely successful Laundry exhibition back on the road. Over 70 of Ireland’s leading illustrators, designers and photographers will be airing their dirty laundry in public.

If you missed it the first time – there’s a second chance to peak through the keyhole to see the murky, guilty, freaky, strange and sometimes weird side to Irish creatives.

It opens tonight reception from 6 - 8pm! Runs until the 27th October at Filmbase, Temple Bar. See you there!

Galway...it's a love thing!

Here are some of the amazing Marge and Mavis's we drew from On The Road. Baboró Festival and Charlie Byrnes hosted two reading and doodle events last Saturday. It was really well attended, thank you to all the Mums and Dads who got there at 10.30 no easy feat with young children!

Tomás and Jack Fitzgerald

Christian and Aoife Joyce

Liam and Alina Ferrie

I got to meet a really talented illustrator Morgan O'Brien who was the official artist of Baboró; he had an exhibition running for the entire festival. Morgan also did all the illustrations for the brochure which looked amazing.



He showed us this great shop Pippa Blue, run by his friend Ger that sells the most amazing wool, fabrics and toys.



The Enchanted exhibition was at The Galway Museum, what a fantastic venue. Here's my lovely Mam beside my pieces from The Ravenous Beast.

The kids visiting the exhibition loved seeing the original art. Nearly 200 kids from local schools came on Friday to the Meet the Artist event.


We had an amazing couple of days; coffees in the sunshine, hot tub on the roof of the hotel, wombling around the kooky shops and the market, window shopping and generally soaking up the vibes.

Galway is deadly; so creative and vibrant. I want to move there!

Baboró Festival

Book festival fever has even infiltrated the Baboró Festival...ravenous beasts, princesses in distress, weird and wonderful creatures, and even runaway dinners feature in Enchanted. This exhibition celebrates picture book art and it opened last Sunday in Galway as part of the Baboró Children's Arts Festival.

Come along to The Galway City Museum all this week to see original picture book art from myself, Annie West, Adrienne Geoghegan, Bruce Ingman and Oisín McGann. Admission is free.

My event 'meet the author' is booked out already at the Museum on Friday.

But come along to Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop this Saturday at 10.30 and 1pm, to read and doodle with me.

Sheep Authors spotted in Dublin...

Last night I had a wonderful dinner date in Shebeen Chic with Sarah McIntyre (Mammy of Morris The Mankiest Monster), Gary Norfield (Daddy of Derek the Sheep) Cliodhna Lyons (24-hour comic girl) and Tom Donegan (The CBI Man).

Sarah and Gary are off touring the libraries of Kildare for Bookfest. Sarah created the amazing Vern and Lettuce comic strip that ran in The Times supplement and The DFC comic for 2 years. Gary is the creator of Derek the Sheep for the Beano amongst other things. I hear he likes a bit of knitting.

We spotted an old black and white photo booth opposite our table, so we all squooshed in. Lamped like stunned sheep in headlights you can just about make out our fuzzy heads.

Go to their Bookfest events or Tom and his scary eyeballs will find you!

Essential Autumn reading...

Busy weekend so I forgot to post my review of John Boyne's new book, Noah Barleywater Runs Away.

If you missed it read it on The Irish Times site.

BT2

I'll be doing a free event in BT2 tomorrow to celebrate the publication of my new book, ON THE ROAD with Mavis and Marge.

Come along for storytelling and doodling. You'll even get to make your own Mavis and Marge! It's at 1pm at their store in Grafton Street.

See you there!

Moomins and Monsters...

Here's a copy of the article of my 10 favourite things that was in The Herald last night. It was so hard to choose as I am such a hoarder!

What are your favourite 10 things?

OFFSET 2010

OFFSET 2010 was really inspirational, a fantastic conference. The dedication and attention to detail that Richard Seabrooke, Bren B and Peter O’Dwyer brought to the event was outstanding.

There was a really lovely atmosphere all weekend; international legends, new talent, illustrators, animators, photographers and designers mingled with each other over coffees and chats. It was great to put names to faces; I thought that the IGI had a really strong presence. It made me proud to be part of a community that is really vibrant and positive. It is up to us to shape the future and as Steven Heller says not to create BORING work.

A recurrent theme over the weekend was how much the whole design world has been shook up, namely by that box in the corner, 'THE INTERNET'. Refreshing to hear that illustrators (Nate Williams Martin Haake) can live all over the world and also have clients form all over the world too. Illustrators are looking to different markets, branding, licensing. Things I never would of thought of before, but now my brain is overloaded!

On yes and tents. Myself and Chris Haughton realised that if you want to get into kids book first thing that you have to do it buy a cheap tent, nothing fancy. I signed my first book in a forest in Australia, while living in a tent. And Chris went to Bologna to find a home for A BIT LOST and also stayed in a ... tent!

And yes I am definitely suffering from POS (Post Offset Syndrome!) Can't wait til next year...