As part of the promotion work for his books, Oisin often does visits to schools and libraries. These can take different forms, but they normally fall into one of two categories; storytelling and drawing, or workshops.

Storytelling and Drawing

More often aimed at younger kids, this normally involves an hour's session where Oisin will read the Mad Grandad books, using an easel and display pages so that the kids can see the illustrations. For practical reasons, he prefers to limit the numbers of children in any session to under fifty. And for storytelling, he finds that the classroom environment is better than a large hall, for both atmosphere and interaction.He normally finishes the session with a drawing. For older kids, he can do a mix of things depending on their age, and reading level. This can include reading one of his longer stories, or extracts from the novels, and discussing writing and illustration, as well as anything from the usual session format.

Workshops

Where there is more time available, for instance if he's doing an author/illustrator in residence, then there is a lot more he can do. A good example of this was the residence he did in St. Mary's School for Boys in Dublin.

Over eight weeks, they covered the basics of composing, writing and illustrating stories, and by the end of it, had produced a collection of short stories, all fully illustrated, which were displayed in the Central Library in the Ilac Centre in Dublin. The lads created some excellent stories, and each pupil was also presented with a certificate. Click here to see how the classes were run.

To arrange a visit or residency, please contact:

Ruth Heneghan
Marketing and Events Manager
The O'Brien Press
20 Victoria Road
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.
Tel: 01 492 3333
Fax: 01 497 2777
Email: ruth@obrien.ie

To arrange an event in Britain or for marketing and P.R. inquiries relating to Oisin's books from Random House, please contact:

Nicola Frame,
Random House Children's Books,
61-63 Uxbridge Road,
London W5 5SA.
Tel: 00 44 20 8231 6740
Fax: 00 44 20 82316737
Email: nframe@randomhouse.co.uk
www.randomhouse.co.uk