Irish published

‘When there is nothing to eat, it affects everything; that is how important food is’, reflects Maggie who, as a child of a Skibbereen farming family, witnesses first-hand the devastating consequences of the Irish famine in the 1840s.

A pair of slug brothers travel the roads until their peace is interrupted by a crow who asks where their home is. Embarrassed, the younger slug makes himself a home he can carry on his back and starts to call himself a snail. The brothers grow apart until they meet with the crow once more and begin to realise how alike they are after all.

Introducing the youngest readers to the tiny creatures that creep, crawl, wriggle and fly all over Ireland, and it does that brilliantly. This is the perfect read for toddlers who enjoy spending happy hours gazing at insects, that, with the possible exception of worms and snails, don’t stay still long enough to be examined. However, this book fulfils the child’s wish to investigate bugs in detail for as long as they wish, while the names clearly printed on each page will encourage the budding entomologist to relate the shape of the word to the creature’s name.

In The Girl Who Fell to Earth, Patricia Forde has created a brilliant, fast paced story about self-discovery in a way that is accessible for younger readers. Aria has grown up on planet Terros, and all her life she has been taught to despise humans. When Aria learns more about herself and begins to question the lessons of her upbringing, and the mission to destroy planet Earth goes wrong, Aria finds herself in more danger than ever before.

Representation is important. Indeed, it would be imprudent to underestimate the value of seeing your own experience represented in the world around you. We all need to see characters that look like us, think like us, feel the things we do.

It is apparent within the first few chapters of Phillip Womack’s new novel, that the author is heavily inspired by classic gothic and fantasy literature and word of mouth style ghost stories. However, Womack puts his own modern fantastical twist on it.