of the Decade Award. McCaughren is also the author of a number of adventure stories
as are Tony Hickey and Margrit Cruickshank, also author of Circling the Triangle (1991),
a novel of teenage unrest and rebellion.
Poetry, picture books and non-fiction have all suffered the constraints of the small
local market. Both the poetry and novels of Donegal poet Matthew Sweeney have been
published in Britain, as has the outstanding work of artist P.J.Lynch who has illustrated
the works of Oscar Wilde and W.B.Yeats among others.
Sculptor Rosamond Praeger created several picture books, including Billy’s Garden
Plot (1918) and the posthumously published The Young Stamp Collectors (1965). The
Sleeping Giant (1991) was written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick, whose
Irish language picture book, An Chanáil (1988), won a Reading Association of Ireland
Award and a Bisto Book of the Decade Award. This was published by the state-funded
publishing house, An Gúm, which was founded in 1945 as a means of promoting the
Irish language. An Gúm has published a number of picture books and other books for
children, some of these translations or co-editions of titles originally published abroad,
as well as original work.
Overall, the development of Irish language writing for children has paralleled that of
English. The work of authors such as Padraig Pearse in the early part of this century
and other more recent writers reflected a very traditional way of life, and it was not until
the 1980s with the advent of publishers such as Cló Iar-Chonnachta that Irish language
writing for young people has begun to adopt a more contemporary note.
The 1980s was the decade which saw a major upsurge in both writing and publishing
for children, and also a growing appreciation of the importance of children’s literature.
In 1981 the Fourteenth Loughborough International Conference on Children’s Literature
took place in Dublin. The Children’s Press publishing house was founded in 1980, and
other publishers, notably O’Brien, Poolbeg and Wolfhound, began to pay serious
attention to the juvenile market, supported on occasion by funding from the Arts
Council of Ireland. Since then other publishers too have turned their attention in this
direction. Production standards have improved considerably and increasingly books
published in Ireland are marketed abroad.
The publishing of information books still lags behind fiction, both in terms of output
and of quality. Exceptions to this include Exploring the Book of Kells (1988) and other
titles by George Otto Simms, and some recent publications by An Gúm. Some Irish
publishers have also begun to produce co-publications of non-fiction titles from abroad
for the Irish market.
Ireland has provided a setting for writers from abroad too, such as Peter Carter’s
Under Goliath (1977), David Rees’s The Green Bough of Liberty (1979) and Elizabeth
Lutzeier’s The Coldest Winter (1991), who have all captured the spirit of the country in
their work.
Organisations active in promoting children’s literature include the Youth Libraries
Group of the Library Association of Ireland, The Reading Association of Ireland which
offers a biennial award for outstanding books of Irish interest for children, the
Children’s Literature Association of Ireland (CLAI) and the Irish Children’s Book Trust.
CLAI was founded in 1987 and through its Annual Conferences and seminars and twice-
yearly publication, Children’s Books in Ireland, provides a lively and pertinent
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