Childrens Book Festival 2023

The annual Childrens Book Festival kicks off on Tuesday 3rd October and runs through to the midterm break, with authors and illustrators visiting 25 libraries and primary schools across Cork County. Marita Conlon-McKenna will read from her new work ‘Fairy Hill’. Conlon-McKenna rose to fame with the 1990 publication of the award winning ‘Under The Hawthorn Tree’, about three children battling to survive the Great Famine. The Festival will also welcome Cork based writers and illustrators Eoin Healy and Siobhán Cleare, whose book ‘Bombella and the Bottled-Frog Adventure’ looks at climate action from the point of view of animals and Trevor Burke, author of the Happy Attic Stories, a series for young readers that are filled with colourful illustrations to support unconfident or reluctant readers. Celebrated Cork author Leona Forde will also be touring West Cork library branches and schools with her ‘Milly McCarthy is a Complete Catastrophe’ book.

Gerard Siggins will visit Ahiohill National School which is part of the Mobile Library service. Cork has four mobile libraries that visit schools, hospitals, nursing homes, towns, villages and emergency accommodation centres across the county. Gerard’s books follow Eoin Madden’s adventures in football and rugby.

There will also be an online event with author Ellen Ryan, which several primary schools can tune into on Monday 16th October at 10am. To sign up your primary class please email maeve.mulrennan@corkcoco.ie. The suitable age group for Ellen’s work is 3rd – 6th class. An invitation for this event will also be emailed out to County primary schools. Ellen Ryan is a writer and journalist from County Wicklow, who has contributed to the Irish Independent and Irish Times, among other media. Her debut book, 'Girls Who Slay Monsters: Daring Tales of Ireland’s Forgotten Goddesses' won both the Children’s Books Ireland KPMG Book of the Year Award and the Children’s Books Ireland KPMG Junior Juries Award 2023, as voted for by thousands of young readers across Ireland. Girls Who Slay Monsters also won Children’s Book of the Year: Senior at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2022. While publicising the book, Ryan spoke about how reading Marita Conlon McKenna’s ‘Under The Hawthorn Tree’ inspired her as a child: “When I was 12 I read 'Under the Hawthorn Tree' by Marita Conlon-McKenna. Set during the Famine, it follows three children as they travel across the country to find their family, and the strength it took for them to survive. It shaped my view of Ireland, our people, and myself. I felt I’d been given the gift of my own heritage.” (Irish Independent 25 September 2022). Ryan’s new book ‘God’s Don’t Cry’ is out on 23 October.

All Childrens Book Festival events are free and suitable for children in Primary Schools in the County.