Today, I would like to highlight a campaign to promote Irish children's literature, which has been running since the beginning of the month under the aegis of Discover Irish Children's Books. The campaign was created by author Sarah Webb in response to the extraordinary fact that Irish writers of children’s books rarely got a mention on lists of children’s top-ten bestsellers in Ireland. What better choice than five authors from this wealth of talent? Four of whom I have actually met in real life, despite being a misanthropic grouch?
Dublin-based Claire not only writes YA fiction, but helps others do so, too. Claire’s first novel was Dear Diary, and possibly her best known is Nothing Tastes as Good. She also writes poetry, and reviews children’s and young adult literature for the Irish Times.
Eve is also an artist, provider of crafting and writing workshops, and poster of lovely videos of birds, squirrels, and hagstones, many from around her home on a hill in Wexford.
3. Olivia Hope
In 2022, Bloomsbury published Olivia’s beautiful picture-book, Be Wild, Little One, to great acclaim—no less a children’s literature great than Shirley Hughes called it ‘magical’, and Michael Morpurgo chose it as one of his five favourite books for children.
She also researched and wrote a re-telling of the story of Samhain, as part of Siamsa Tire’s Associate Artist Scheme, involving a púca and a chorus of banshees (I mean, what is not to love with that combination?). She worked with 20 other artists, resulting in an exhibition (held in the museum of her home county of Kerry) called Slí Abhaile/A Way Home.
Olivia is a former record-breaking hammer-thrower and often tweets about cheese.
Nigel Quinlan has written two books (well, probably more, but two are published), one The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox and The Cloak of Feathers (Hachette Children’s). Both fantasy, one involving a family whose father helps to control the weather by turning the seasons (except when it doesn't work) and the other involving a ‘fairy festival’ at which, once a century, the Gentle Folk actually turn up. They’re not really all that Gentle, either…
He also wrote an article about editing that will have other authors both nodding and flinching in recognition: “This was less like writing, and more like Austerity”, as he chopped favoured chunks out of The Cloak of Feathers to polish a very good novel out of the bigger one he had written. Happily, the banshees on bicycles stayed.His local bookshop is also mine: the very excellent Sheelagh-na-Gig in Cloughjordan.
One of the most formidable and respected presences in Irish children’s literature, Siobhán has won many awards for her numerous books for children, written in both English and Irish. She has also translated books (from German).
In 2011, discontent with the opportunities for Irish authors of good children’s literature, she founded and became the commissioning editor and publisher in Little Island Books, a New Island Books imprint that focused on that very demographic. Little Island has published many excellent books—Patricia Forde’s Wordsmith, Sam Thompson’s Wolfstongue and Fox’s Tower, and… ahem… Good Red Herring.
Siobhán has seen children’s literature from a great many angles: writing it, teaching about it; she was Ireland’s first Laureate na nÓg/Children’s Laureate, and is a former editor for both Inis (the magazine of Children’s Books Ireland) and Bookbird (the journal of the international children’s literature organization, IBBY).
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