Children's Book Festival 2011 Invites You to Eat Books!

This tasty offer posted on the website of Children’s Books Ireland highlights one of this year’s nationwide Children’s Book Festival competitions. As well as offering you the chance to win fantastic prizes for your school or library, Children’s Book Festival 2011 will be offering a tasty programme of Irish and international authors and illustrators during the month of October, designed to whet the appetite of readers all over the country. Activities will be running in all branches of Clare County Library. With everything from readings by popular authors, illustration and live history workshops, storytelling and competitions, there will be countless opportunities get your teeth into books! 2011 will again see the return of the incredibly popular O’Brien Press Cover Design Competition, which gives budding designers the opportunity to have their artwork featured on the cover of a professionally published book. To celebrate the fourth year of the O’Brien Press competition, Laureate na nÓg Siobhán Parkinson’s title Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows and a Witch (Maybe), first published in 1997, has been chosen for re-jacketing. The lucky winner will not only see their design gracing the shelves in their local library or bookshop, but will have their entire class invited to a glitzy awards ceremony and will win five sets of all Siobhán Parkinson’s O’Brien Press titles for their school! And now that invitation to Eat Books! This year’s festival image comes courtesy of the acclaimed illustrator Niamh Sharkey who visited Clare’s libraries in 2007 for Children’s Book Festival. Niamh’s image features a hungry monster whose favourite thing to do is to munch on books! Your task is to name this little beastie shown here in this year’s official CBF poster and by entering the competition you’re automatically in with a chance to win some fantastic prizes for your school or library. Further details on these competitions can be found on the CBI website www.childrensbooksireland.ie. Make sure to keep a regular check on our site too www.clarelibrary.ie where our full festival programme will be posted in the coming weeks.