38 and fresh as ever!

(c) Michelle Moloney King. Loving the style!

Inis 38 is here! Where? In your letterbox, your favourite bookshop, your local library, your neighbour's day's post, your greedy hands... 

Everything you ever wanted to know about Sally Nichols, Alexis Deacon, Jutta Bauer, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, eco children's literature, selling children's books to adults, the last Artemis Fowl, the latest David Almond, the first Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland and much, much more all brought to you by a host of brilliant contributors (if I say so myself).
For a sneak peek, click!

New Job

Not sure I mentioned this here before, but I find myself wearing a new and dashing hat: that of reviews editor for Inis, Children's Books Ireland's magazine. Proud, excited, terrified, snowed-under don't even begin to describe how I've been feeling over the last few weeks. 

I'm currently in the tricky but well-documented process of Doing Every Thing At the Same Time: updating contacts, introducing myself to contributors and publishers, fighting off the avalanche of email, reorganizing my (and other people's) life so that I can attend launches, previews and presentations (got my first invite to Xmas drinks today!), reading advanced proof copies to try and determine what's the next unmissable big thing and skimming through gabillions of books before assigning them the best reviewers possible.
I'm also still an Author with work to do, like 3 non-fiction books to write for my French publishers, 1 perhaps-translation (after the New Year, phew!), lots of perhaps-online articles and oooh, a perhaps-novel in English. And did I mention the school and library visits for Mad Cap?
Oh yeah, and I'm making dinner, too.

The new new Inis

It's out! And partly online, as is my review of Little Red Hood by Marjolaine Leray. Here's a snippet:
"This is a very different retelling of the classic tale, one that does not shy away from its cruelty and awfulness, but embraces both through plot, graphic style and text. One wolf, one girl, two pencils, no décor to speak of, no props apart from the strictly indispensable or highly symbolic. "

Tell me what you read | Bracelet of Bones, by Kevin Crossley-Holland

As mentioned previsously, Inis is now online, where it hosts a heap of articles and reviews that are not available anywhere else. One of those is my take on Kevin Crossley-Holland's latest novel Bracelet of Bones. Here's a teaser:
"The fantastic setting of 11th-century Europe (think boats rolling over land, Viking settlements from Iceland to Russia, runes, bone-carving and Christian–Muslim–Pagan conflicts) provides Kevin Crossley-Holland with a wealth of fascinating detail as well as a plot rich in danger, tension and drama."


For the rest, I'll invite you, again, to go over to the Inis site, right here.

Inis: live

Hear! Hear! The new glossy-fab Inis magazine is out and shiny! Go and grab your copy at a bookshop near you and have a wander around the brand new website: it's full of reviews and features from back issues as well as things that will not appear in the print edition. It also has a blog to help you keep in touch with your kidlit side and keep you posted on events, competitions and debates. Speaking of which, you should join in the current discussion about the Bisto Awards: how they work, what they do, and what they're for. See what you think!