Author and publisher Anna McQuinn has just submitted this report following her festival visit to Griffeen Valley Educate Together in Lucan. You can find out more about Anna and her books here. Some great photos are also included below - thanks Anna!

On Friday 16th, I was delighted to visit The Griffeen Valley Educate Together School. I’d never been in an Educate Together school before and I was very impressed.

First I visited two infants classes and we talked about how a book is made.
We used my book, Lulu Loves the Library...

CBI is very lucky to benefit from the invaluable contribution of an energetic team of interns and volunteers who assist core staff team in their work throughout the year. This summer, Emily McClave was recruited as Programme Assistant to help in the organisation and smooth running of CBI's contribution to the national events and activities programme during October's Children's Books Festival. Here she offers an insight into some of her experiences over the last few (manic!) months:

Children's Book Festival 2009 is drawing to a close now and I am very sad to say so is my time working as an intern for Children's Books Ireland. The festival has been a rip-roaring success and I have had a wonderful few months with the CBI team.

I joined the project back in August when I was told that my job would be to help co-ordinate over 1000 events! Gulp! No small task then! Luckily there was a whole list of brilliant authors and illustrators already lined up. My main task was to work out who was going where and when and how they were getting there! The amount of hard-work that goes on behind the scenes is immense and Tom especially deserves massive kudos for his organisational expertise!

The festival itself has been a whirlwind of fun events and crazy press launches involving film crews and inflatable dinosaurs! The highlight of my time has definitely been having the chance to meet great authors including Philip Ardagh, Joseph Delaney, Brian Moses and Sophie McKenzie...

That’s it… It’s now over for me…  After 34 readings, 28 Libraries, 2 Schools, 1 resource centre and a lot of Children, (I had originally intended to count the number of Children so that would have been a more impressive sentence.) It is all over for me… No more CBF 2009 for Paul Tubb.

The scene for my final 5 readings was county Donegal and I arrived in Letterkenny on Wednesday 21st at around 1900 hrs and made my way up to Letterkenny Quality Court Hotel, which would be my base for the next two days.

I got to the Hotel, had a panini and a wave of tiredness came over me so I went up to my room, talked to my wife and watched TV before going to bed...