This weekend I went to the Rathgar Festival. I saw three authors speak and went to one writing workshop. I also forgot to take pictures so I have drawn the people instead.

I first saw Alan Nolan talk about The Sackville Street Caper and Double Trouble at The Dead Zoo. I only got to see some of his talk, but the parts that I did see were very fun. Alan explained some of the history behind his book and taught us how to draw an amazing pirate shark from Double Trouble at The Dead Zoo.

Read more about The Sackville Street Caper and Double Trouble at The Dead Zoo

I then went to Alison Weatherby’s writing workshop on writing good murders and mysteries. We went through the steps of planning a mystery and she told us about how she wrote the mystery and murder in The Secrets Act.

I then went to Judi Curtin’s talk about the history behind her latest book, Sally and The City Of Dreams. We learned about what life was like when Irish people would travel to America in the past. She also read a few pages from her latest book.

Finally I saw Dave Rudden and he showed us how to create magic. He told us about how he wrote the magic in his series, Knights of The Borrowed Dark. It was really fun to see all of the creative magic powers everyone came up with.

All of the books mentioned are Irish children’s books that are amazing and I recommend to everyone!