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Children’s Books Ireland (CBI) has announced the line-up for Stories Are For Everyone, a year-long campaign to get children across Ireland reading.
Throughout October, the first month of the campaign, local authors including Louise O’Neill, Nicola Pierce and Andrew Whitsun, will read from their books in libraries and schools, alongside international authors such as the German writer Binette Schroeder, American Dav Pilkey and Jeremy Strong from the UK.
CBI will be also be hosting “book doctor” sessions, where it will recommend new books at pop-up clinics in Dublin (4th October), Carlow (18th October) and Longford (19th October), and is running several competitions.
One competition is based around a CBI poster, which has a picture of a “Hat Monkey” reading to his friends, drawn by illustrator Chris Haughton. Children are invited to come up with title of the book the Hat Monkey is reading in the picture, and the winner will receive €1,000 worth of books for his or her school library.
Another competition is to design the front cover for Marian Broderick’s The Lost Fairy, which is being republished by O’Brien press in spring 2015.
October will end with a Halloween extravaganza at the National Gallery of Ireland on the 31st October, where author Marie Louise Fitzpatrick will host a day of spooky stories and activities.
Aoife Murray, programme and events manager at CBI, said 50,000 children and teenagers will attend one or more event this month. Most events will be in English but CBIwill host some in Irish, to reflect “a strong publishing scene” in the language, she said.
Stories Are For Everyone is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the orgasation Dublin Unesco City of Literature organisation, and the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency. CBI is supported by the Irish Arts Council.