A Very Merry Book Loving Christmas to you all!

Interactive Monster Doodle

Yesterday I launched The Children's Books festival with an interactive Live Streamed Monster Doodle event in Tallaght Library. I gave a workshop with tiny children as young as four and we connected to 9 schools across Ireland in a Google+ Hangout. The Monster Doodle was also live streamed on You Tube so other schools could follow us too. We all made Monster art with Oil pastels on huge rolls of Fabriano paper that took over the library! The doodles were fantastic. Go have a look at Mrs Bells Class Blog to see how her class got on...Doodletastic! 

Happy Niamh at the Monster Doodle! 

 10m Giant roll of paper at Tallaght Library

 Monster Doodles 

Monster Doodles 

 Google Hangout 

Cabra Library's Doodle

Huge thank you to the team at Children's Books Ireland, Bord Gais Energy Book Club for their support, Tallaght Library for setting it up and all especially to the children who Monster Doodled with me on Google!  

Laureate's na nÓgs first week!

The first week has been a bit of a whirlwind... but it has been brilliant fun. The messages and warm reaction to my new role as Laureate na nÓg have been really welcoming and I am looking forward to the next two years. Children's Books Ireland has gathered all the coverage here.

And I have been busy! Here's what day 2 was like:

6am-Wake up

7am- Taxi to RTE

9am- Interview on RTE John Murray's Radio Show

10am- Taxi to Brown Bag Films

12.30 Collected by the lovely Nessa who is the Laureates assistant. Fancy that!

1.30 First official event as Laureate na nÓg speaking at Barnardo's Literacy event.

2.30 Back to Brown Bag Films to work on visuals for The Hugglemonster show.

4.30- Interview Newstalk

5 pm- Attend actor records with director for The Hugglemonsters

11.30pm- Last train home and sleep. Phew!

Tomorrow, I will be giving the keynote address at The Children's Books Ireland Conference Weaving a Shared Story, which is taking place this weekend, Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th May. I've been collecting lots of old and new images to show there. The conference is always jammed packed with inspirational writers and illustrators and this year is no exception. On Saturday there is a talk by Jutter Bauer winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Medal. And Sundays line up includes one of my heroes Ed Emberley, we adore his drawing books in our house! Hope to see you there. 

World Book Day 2012

Bob from The Gutter Bookshop along with Children's Books Ireland organised a fantastic World Book Day yesterday at Wood Quay! Myself, Sarah Webb and Gerry Boland helped launch the Biggest Book Show on Earth live link from London where 750,000 children from the UK and Ireland tuned in online.  RTE Junior came and covered our event,  go check it out here. 

Bob The Book Wizard!

Me and fellow book lover Sarah Webb

St. Audeon's NS see first sketches and doodles of Henry Hugglewug, then we then drew lots of Monsters together. 

Have you read these Picture books :)

Finished with a bit of Nonsense Smonsense!

BookFest Fever!

It's Book Festival time! I am the official Book Festival Illustrator. For this year’s poster competition CBI are asking you to come up with a name for the book-eating monster who appears on the Children’s Book Festival poster. You could win some fantastic prizes for your school or library! Enter here!

For my BookFest tour dates I'll be visiting libraries in Dublin and Cork this year. I am also one of the illustrators exhibiting at Images Beyond Borders, a new exhibition of illustrations from children’s literature, featuring work by Irish and Austrian illustrators. It is the result of an exciting collaboration between the Irish children’s books laureate, Laureate na nÓg, Siobhán Parkinson, and the Austrian Embassy, and will run for three weeks. The exhibition of orignal art including the Book Eating Monster opens at The No Grants Gallery in Temple Bar this Friday at 7pm. Info here.

Story Spark at The Ark!

I had an amazing session yesterday at CBI’s Story Spark at The Ark in Dublin. I have to admit that as my last event of 2010 it was the session that I really fretted over. I think I was so nervous before because it is such an iconic venue and I knew there was going to be a packed house. I couldn’t do my usual doodle along session with the kids so I had to come up with more theatre friendly ideas.

So I decided that I should bring on as many props that I could pack into my suitcase…

I also brought along dummy books, roughs, early sketches and original illustrations.

The Ravenous Beast puppet went down a storm!!!!

I cracked the drawing by getting the kids to join me on stage for a doodle-along, and by playing the doodle shape game with Tom from CBI at the end!

Once I was onstage my nerves and worries disappeared, the audience were AWESOME! As you can probably tell from the photos I had great fun and the hour totally zoomed by…

Thanks to CBI for coming up with such an amazing month celebrating stories and huge kudos to The Ark too. They really storm a path for children’s creativity in this land! The Ravenous Beast thinks so too!

There is a lovely review of my session here from Natasha, who came along yesterday with her twins. Passed on by Tom at CBI. Thanks Tom!

Click on RTE Junior Today

This is me in studio for RTÉ Young Peoples it's up on the RTE Junior site.

It's only up for today so you have to be quick!

Story Spark Ignites!

Last night was the launch of StorySpark at The Ark. It was such a warm family celebration and really fitting way to blast off the celebrations. Hurray!

Myself and Owen brought our three, and they were well impressed. The first floor has been kitted-out as a fully functioning Story Lab; an interactive workspace complete with mp3 listening stations and a digital recording booth.

You can listen to stories already created by children and then add your own story to the collection. Mags from Children's Books Ireland said that 'all the stories created in the lab during the next month will find a permanent home in Dublin City’s archive.'

Pretty amazing! Imagine your great grandchildren listening to these stories in the future. I overheard a young girl of ten setting her tale in Wagner Manor!

Aoibhe and Oscar loved listening to the recordings. And they were all totally impressed with the mountain of cocktail sausages and innocent smoothies. 'Just for us!'

It's going to be a really wonderful month filled full of stories. Bob from The Gutter Bookstore will be on hand if you want to get lots of signed books for Christmas pressies! Joseph O'Connor gave a lovely opening talk, I promise to upload soon. He really included all the children, especially the Bray Junior Book Club.

The stage is set. All we need now is you. Oh, yeah and a few story makers!

Happy World Book Day!

Happy World Book Day everyone! Yes today is when we celebrate books, reading them, drawing them, writing them. My absolute favourite day of the year.

This morning my kids had to dress up as their favourite character from a book for school. Megan was 'Judy Moody' she drew a shark and wrote 'I ATE A SHARK' with black marker on a white t-shirt. Just like Judy Moody did in the first book, when Judy is starting third grade, she's worried that she doesn't even have a T-shirt with words, like all the other kids, because her family didn't go anywhere on vacation. So she whips up her own T-shirt (I Ate a Shark!). Megan coupled it with stripy tights and tussled her hair. She really did look like Judy Moody. I over heard Megan saying, 'I did actually eat a shark' to Harry Potter when I dropped her off at her class.

Oscar was dressed up as Flinn from Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, and Aoibhe was Mrs Fox from Roald Dahl'sFantastic Mr Fox. There was huge excitement in Holmpatrick School in Skerries.
Today the younger children from the Junior classes will be coupled up with a older child, they have to show and tell their choosen book to each other. So the Junior infants will experience a bit of Patrick Ness or Eoin Colfer. Rare!

Also today, watch out for books that are free for the taking! It's part of Book Crossing, Irish authors plan to turn Ireland into a free library for World Book Day. Authors and Illustrators will be leaving signed copies of their books in public places for lucky readers to find. Books will be registered and tracked on www.bookcrossing.com

No excuse now, get your head stuck in a book and celebrate today!!!!!

BookFest Fever!!!

I've been running about from Library to Library doing workshops as part of Children's Books Ireland Bookfest for the past two days! The children were amazing...and the teachers and librarians too.
I was made feel very welcome in Ashbourne, Duleek and Slane Libraries. Thank you to all the children who came along and doodled with me.
I am off to France on Friday to do more childrens' workshops! I have been learning French for the past few months myself by CD. I think it will be very funny giving my workshops in french I hope they understand me!
Here are a few photos from Ashbourne Library from yesterday taken by Joe Fannning.