A CROWD of young fans and colleagues including authors Marilyn Taylor (Mervyn Taylor's wife), Caroline Swift and Aisling O'Loughlin gathered at Waterstone's for the launch of Marita Conlon McKenna's latest book for children, Fields of Home. The final instalment of her poignant, award winning famine trilogy finds the protagonists of the first book grown up, with children of their own.
Conlon McKenna will be reading from her work at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the autumn. Uber illustrator P.J. Lynch, whose last book, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey has 350,000 copies in print worldwide, was on hand to lend his support. His rendering of Brendan Behan's The King of Ireland's Son, due out in October, no doubt to coincide with Frankfurt.
Meanwhile, Mike Kelly of Young Irish Filmmakers (John Boorman president, Neil Jordan patron) is busy in Kilkenny getting ready to film Conlon McKenna's first book Under the Hawthorn Tree - their debut production. Actual filming starts in July. The book was a runaway bestseller.