Fallen Star Stories

In the 15th year of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize,  Onjali Q. Raufs' The Boy At The Back Of The Class has been announced as the overall winner. Chosen by professional booksellers, this outstanding book simply shines as an exceptional new voice in Middle Grade fiction. It is the moving tale of refugee Ahmet; separated from his family, alone in a new school and a new country, to the other children in school he is simply the boy who sits at the back of the class. When a small group of his classmates take it upon themselves to make friends with Ahmet and learn his story. This sets them on an unexpected adventure.  Told in a genuine  voice, this topical story reaches out in a way which children aged 9+ years will find easy to relate and understand. It covers many difficult issues (bullying, diversity, racism) with honesty, directness, empathy, compassion and a wonderful childlike vision and gentle humour.  Warm, expressive, funny and thought-provoking, The B...

Tuesday, 19th March saw the announcement of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal shortlists. The shortlists contain 8 books each, taken from the longlists of 137 and 117 respectively. The Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards are the UK's most prestigious and longest standing book awards for children and young adults. The titles included represent the very best in children's writing and illustration published in the UK. They also recognise and honour a diverse range of perspectives and voices as part of their mission to bring the best childrens writing and illustration to light; bringing together authors and illustrators across the globe. And now...on to the lists: CILIP Carnegie Medal shortlist (alphabetical by author surname): The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (Electric Monkey) Rebound by Kwame Alexander , illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile (Andersen Press) The House with Chicken Legs by Sophie Anderson , illustrated by Elisa Paganelli (Usborne Books) Bone Tal...

Just putting out a quick reminder to everyone in the Ireland and the UK. With all the excitement of World Book Day winding down for another year, it's easy to forget about the wonderful WBD books available and the World Book Day tokens! All of the brilliant books above are still available for purchase costing ONLY one WBD token each (or, if you've used yours already, €1.50...£1.00 on the UK.) The WBD tokens can also be used to give you €1.50 (£1.00) off towards the purchase of any other book. But...and this is very important; the World Book Day tokens are only valid until Sunday, 31st of March. After that, your bookseller can no longer accept them. That gives you a little over a week to visit your local bookstore and spend those tokens! I had a lovely World Book Day, though not at all as busy as World Book Days past. I visited a local school and spent the day reading to each and every class from a selection of my favourite books, new and old; something I really love t...

Children's Books Ireland (CBI) has announced the ten titles that will compete for the 29th CBI Book of the Year awards. The big reveal was held today (Monday, 11 March) at the Strand Theatre in Belfast as part of the Young at Art, Belfast Childrens Festival. The ten books will vie for the most prestigious awards in childrens' literature in Ireland, including Honour Award for Fiction, Honour Award for Illustration, the Eílis Dillon Award for a first childrens' book, The Judges' Special Award, CBI Book of the Year and the Childrens' Choice Award which is selected in close cooperation with reading groups from schools, libraries and bookshops registered in the CBI Shadowing Scheme across the island. The books selected have all displayed the highest level of literary excellence, appeal to their audience of children and young people, entertain and engage the audience and development and/or challenge the childs' growth as a reader and their sense of understanding ...

With exactly one week to go until the BEST Book Day of the year, I hope you're all ready and as excited as I am. There's always so much going on; so much to do and so many activities to get the schools involved with. So, I guess it's also time for me to finish up my 'through-the-years' posts of the events, authors, illustrators, storytellers and fantastic school visits that make World Book Day so memorable for me...and for a lot of other people as well. Let the time-travel begin! For the World Book Day Extravaganza 2015 , I had to add a couple of days later in the month in order to accommodate everyone! With lots of familiar faces, we all had a fantastic time! March turned out to be a brilliant month. We welcomed Sadie Cramer back, and this time she brought Juliette Saumande with her! There were readings from their book Chop Chop Mad Cap , talk of where ideas come from, the chractersand their relationships with each other and how pictures are made. Then th...

As we inch even closer to World Book Day 2019 , here are a few more of my memories of the great times and all the carrying on that I organised for the local school classes. World Book Day 2012 was a very busy year as I welcomed an even bigger crowd of students than previous years, and an even bigger crowd of authors and storytellers to provide the fun and excitement. Rab Fulton made yet another appearance with his animated and hilarious Scary Stories for young folk. Featuring tales about his grandmother in Glasgow, I believe... Dubray Books' own Ronan Quinn had the kids wrapped up in a few of his favourite stories  from Roald Dahl. Dirty Beasts or Revolting Rhymes, anyone? What an incredible treat it was to have Nicola Pierce arrive in Galway to tell us all about her fantastic (then new) book, Spirit of the Titanic ! Not only did she read from the book (highly recommended, by the way) but she shared a wealth of information about the Titanics' story and the lives...