Wild Atlantic writers: the vibrant aesthetic of the Whole Wild World bus was ‘shaped with the input of children’

If you happen to be driving along the Wild Atlantic Way this spring, look out for an unusual bus on the narrow boreens of Donegal, Mayo and Kerry. You shouldn’t have to look too hard though. Clad in bright, popping colours and bubble-like balloons, surely you won’t be able to miss the bus bouncing along against the backdrop of green fields and grey cliffs, blue sea and sky. This is the official Whole Wild World vehicle, a bespoke 30-seater bus designed to ferry the finest Irish children’s authors and illustrators along the west coast of Ireland, from Malin to Mizen Head.

The central outreach initiative of Patricia Forde’s two-year tenure as Laureate na nÓg, the “artist-mobile” as Forde describes it breathlessly, is “our way of zooming around as many people as possible, to as many children as possible – children who live in the most remote parts of Ireland, who have probably never met an author or illustrator in their lives because of where they live – in a way that is child-friendly and cheerful, in a way that makes reading and drawing fun. We wanted something that would be noticeable”, she continues, “almost like the circus coming into town”.

The emphasis on fun, Forde says, is a crucial part of her philosophy as a writer for children in the post-Covid climate. “Kids are under a lot of pressure [in the post-Covid context],” she says. “Because many of them will have missed crucial stages in the development of their literacy, and teachers are under pressure to help them catch up and reach their targets. There is a danger that books will become just a school subject, that reading is something [kids] have to learn to do.” With the Whole Wild World tour “we are trying to balance that out, to say look books and reading are still great fun”.

Author-illustrator Paddy Donnelly is one of the 30 creatives who will join Forde on her west coast tour. Donnelly grew up in Ballycastle, on the northernmost coastal tip of Co Antrim, and knows from experience the challenges of remaining culturally connected when you live away from the metropolis. The Belgium-based writer recently returned to his hometown to conduct author events, which included taking a boat to Rathlin Island, where his latest picture-book, The Golden Hare is set, to visit a school with just 12 children.

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“It was this beautiful little school,” he says, “and a writer had never visited the island to meet them before. They were just so pleased to have someone there.” The fact of the book’s setting and Donnelly’s Ballycastle heritage made it even more special for them, he says, “especially when I showed them some of my books which have been translated into Chinese, Dutch: that a story based on their little home could go around the world was magical to them”.

Forde, who has written more than 20 books for children, in a career that has been flourishing for more than two decades, has also experienced the transformative importance of a live author visit on young readers. “There is a tangible difference when you are reading your own book to children in person. An alchemy, a magic of having the person there. Before, they don’t quite make the connection that there is a human being behind the book, but then they meet you and they can ask how you did it, what you meant. They own it. And then the inevitable, they are asking whether they could do what you do. It’s that idea ‘you have to see it to be it’: it’s empowering.”

The Whole Wild World tour has been designed to follow the Wild Atlantic Way precisely because of the remoteness of the landscape and the communities who live there. “A lot of the schools we are visiting,” Forde says “will have rarely, if ever, had an author visit. It’s not because authors wouldn’t have any interest in visiting them. It’s just that economically, it makes no sense. [A school] would have to figure in hotel costs, transport costs, and it just wouldn’t work as a model.”

Elaina Ryan, CEO of Children’s Books Ireland, who helps to administer the Laureate na nÓg programme, says that in the broader context, the Whole Wild World campaign is aimed at filling a vacuum in literary events for children. Events for children, she says “have been decreasing in recent years”, in particular at literature and arts festivals that would have previously done more. “There are notable exceptions,” she continues, “ILFD has a schools’ programme that showcases so many Irish artists, and they have enough of a budget to take a risk, but plenty of other [festivals] don’t, and feel they don’t have the expertise or budget to do it.” Libraries, she says, help to fill the gap: “there are four occasions in year where they are programming events for children – the Summer Stars campaign, Spring into Storytime, Children’s Book Week in October, the Right to Read initiative – but in general”, she says with some dismay, “the provision is declining”.

Forde is disappointed with the backward trend in programming too: “Children are not a subspecies,” she says. “They enjoy festivals as much as we do. They want to go to festivals for the same reasons that I want to go as a reader: to find my tribe. Children are the same. They want to talk about what they are reading, the excitement of meeting other people. What people forget is, children are the audience of the future – and if we don’t encourage them when they are young, they won’t be there. It should not be an added extra. If someone is organising an adult festival and they are thinking of bringing this huge star, they should pause and think ‘what are we doing for children? Are we fulfilling our responsibility?’”

Author events are important for authors too, they all agree. As Donnelly explains “making a connection with your audience is crucial. It can be a lonely job writing and illustrating.” Standing in front of a live audience, there is nowhere to hide. “You see what works for them, what they connect with the most.” Forde observes that illustrated books in particular can have a binding force across age groups – “even if you can’t read, or speak a different language, you can read the pictures” – and Donnelly agrees: “You can go to a school and say ‘who likes books?’ and a few hands will go up. You ask ‘who likes drawings?’ and every single hand goes up.”

As a writer in both English and Irish, meanwhile, Forde will be well-primed to communicate with kids across the Gaeltacht areas that the tour encompasses. However, there will also be an interpreter on the bus for some of the journey, so that the sizeable number of Ukrainian students in some of the rural schools “feel included and loved”.

Finally, Ryan underlines how important it is that the children’s voice should be reflected in a children’s event, a philosophy at the heart of everything Children’s Books Ireland do. Indeed as Ryan explains, the vibrant aesthetic of the Whole Wild World bus was “shaped with the input of children, from a local drama group in Kilkee. They told us what they wanted – a sheep and a boat and a load of mad things – and we made it happen. So that’s what you see on the side of the bus.”

The children’s voices will also be solicited at each stop along the way. Children will be surveyed before and after events, so that the visiting artists “will have a sense of what type of event they might do, rather than just rolling out a generic piece”, and the artists can understand what worked best for the children they met.

“What a privilege!” Forde interjects with an enthusiasm that sums up the whole endeavour of the Whole Wild World tour. “To be given such a snapshot of this time in the West of Ireland.”

For those schools outside of the official tour, meanwhile, the Whole Wide World bus will make a stop at Eyre Square in Galway for a Monster Doodle as part of the Cúirt Literature Festival, while young readers in the rest of the country can follow the journey on social media, with regular activity videos from the bus tour.

The Whole Wild World tour begins at Ireland’s most northerly point, Malin Head in Co Donegal, on Monday, April 15th and concludes at Kinsale Library in Cork on Sunday, April 28th. The full list of participating schools, bookshops, libraries and cultural venues can be found at childrenslaureate.ie