Belfast YLG Wendy Drewett Ireland Book Day
The unicorn’s excuse for a long gap in blog posts this time? The CILIP YLG Wendy Drewett Ireland Book Day in Belfast, at which my
author was very kindly invited to talk about her new Pendragon Legacy series.
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| The book display |
She flew out to Belfast via Manchester on Tuesday morning,
taking not one but two planes. This meant I had to gallop very fast to keep up!
Finally landing at the George Best Airport with its view of the famous cranes, we then took a
scenic drive through the city with friendly school librarian Tara Corcoran to
the Belfast Royal Academy, where (revived from her early morning start by chocolate croissants and hot tomato soup), Katherine spoke to Form 1 in a
magnificent if rather chilly hall, since a frozen pipe had knocked out half their heating system. After the talk, the children crowded around the
signing table to keep warm, while the drillers got to work searching out the
leak 25 feet under the playground. Amazingly, everyone kept smiling. (Katherine apologises for spelling some of the Irish names wrong... it's a well-known fact authors cannot spell, and that's why they need editors so much.)
After the school, we took a taxi ride to the Dunsilly Hotel in
Ballymena, where a gala dinner with librarians and other authors
soon warmed everyone up!
Wednesday morning kicked off (I didn’t kick anyone, honest!)
at the Antrim Board Centre just down the road, where Katherine did a panel event
with authors Diana Hendry (The Seeing) and Paul Howard (Bugville), chaired
by Joy Court.
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| Katherine, Diana and Paul |
This was followed by a packed day of talks, including an
interesting session on digital reading and social networking with Bev Humphrey.
Winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, Liz Pichon (Tom Gates books) rounded off the morning with an entertaining talk on how she became an author, and demonstrated how she draws her
characters:
After lunch we were treated to an interesting account by Professor Joan Swann of the shadowing process for the Carnegie and
Greenaway medals, a passionate case for graphic novels
with Lucy Forrester from Peters Bookselling services, and another author
panel with newer (and somewhat younger) authors Jane McLoughlin (At Yellow Lake), Dave
Cousins (15 Days Without a Head), and Sarah Hammond (The Night Sky in My Head), chaired by Rachel Levy.
The unicorn sees a head theme emerging here…
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| Jane, Dave, Sarah and Rachel |
Then it was back to the hotel for another dinner with librarians and authors staying on to do school visits the next day. I was highly tempted to follow Sarah Hammond on her visit to the Giant's Causeway, but early next morning my author squeezed me into another taxi back to the airport, shared with the lovely
Professor Swann, for the flight home.
More galloping for me - but thankfully not via Manchester
this time!
The unicorn very much enjoyed his first visit to Belfast, and would like to thank all the lovely librarians who looked after Katherine so well. Authors are not easy
to look after, and I should know.
Razz X.