October 28, 2010

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!

1 comment:

Morgan O'Brien said...

That library reminds me of a great library I used to attend during my summers stateside as a child. They held an summer read-a-thon of sorts. For every chapter book you read, you would earn say 5 points, a picture book would get you 1 point. The points could then be traded for prizes. When you finished a book you returned it to the librarian and told her a bit about it, whether you liked it or not that sort of thing. You were then brought into an "Aladdin's Cave" of brand new books and small knick-knacks. Based on the number of points you had saved you could pick out a prize. The amazing thing was it wasn't really a race to see how many books you could fly through. You could only take out so many in one go, and you had them for a week, so it was in ones best interest to simply enjoy the act of reading itself. I haven't seen anything like it since but it remains a truly perfect childhood experience and memory!