Children’s Book Festival

2013 marks the twenty-third consecutive year of the CBI Children’s Book Festival. It runs for the month of October every year and sees libraries, schools and bookshops across the country hosting events with the very best Irish and international children’s writers and illustrators.

CBI was able to spearhead this celebration of books for young people throughout the country. The Children’s Book Festival has now become an all-Ireland event. The idea of a recommended reading guide has been retained and CBI’s Recommended Reading Guide is published every year to coincide with the festival. The 2012 festival comprised of more than 1,000 events and involved almost 50,000 young readers spread across every county in Ireland.

Look out for an event near you!

http://www.childrensbooksireland.ie/childrens-book-festival/

'Billionaire Boy' by David Walliams

This book is very humorous and fun, enjoyable to read and can be a little sad at times.

Joe Spud is a twelve year old boy he is a Billionaire who`s overweight and has everything except a friend. He goes to a very expensive posh school and has everything his own formula one race car and a 1000 seater couch. He wasn’t always rich, his Dad worked in a loo roll factory making loo rolls every day and one day decided he was going to make something of himself he invented a special loo roll called Bumfresh and quit his job and started up his business which became a huge success.

Joe is lonely, he doesn’t have a single friend, the story follows Joe on his quest to find a friend, where he learns about trust and companionship, and ultimately that money can’t buy friendship.
One day Joe decided he was going to quit his school as he was being bullied and called names, he wanted to move to the local school and be a “normal” boy in the hope of finding a friend.

The story follows Joe on his quest to find a friend, I would recommend this book for ages 9-14

Some Dogs Do, by Jez Alborough

This is a magical story which really gets the imagination working, my children love this story and they are always really happy & excited after it. The story is about Sid a dog who sets off to school one day and on his way he discovers he can fly, he is really happy and excited and asks his best friend Ben “Did you see me fly just then?” “Don’t be daft” said Ben “Dogs don’t fly.”

Nobody believed Sid and when he tried to show them he wasn’t able to fly again, that day he went home feeling sad, he tried to do the things he normally did but something just wasn’t right.

Then as he sat looking up at the sky, his Dad came out to chat and see what was wrong with Sid, soon Sid discovered his Dad had a secret!

Once Sid learned the secret he was a very happy pup from then on. This is a lovely story to read with lots of rhyme so very easy for children to follow and easy for parents to read it gives a positive message to children and adults to believe in yourself and keep on trying and to always believe in your dreams.