A RETIRED UCC lecturer, who lives for much of the year in Courtmacsherry, has written a children’s book to help youngsters develop their language skills.
Eoin Healy had written a lot of scientific material – journal papers etc – during his working life but always had an urge to try his hand at fiction.
‘Retirement gave me more time and the Covid lockdown even more of it. Having a three-year old grand-daughter at the beginning of the pandemic prompted me to write a story for her. Before I knew it, the story was growing into a full novel which ended up as a book of 11 chapters and over 20,000 words. I had welcomed two more grandchildren by the time it was finished so it’s dedicated to all thre!’ he said.
Eoin’s background as a zoologist gave him the material for the story called ‘Bombella and the Bottled Frog Adventure’ which is based around the busy life of a community of animals that live in and around Willow Pond. ‘Centre stage are the two main characters: Bombella, a brainier bumblebee than you would find between Bandon and Bantry and Fergus, a fearless and funny frog. But Fergus lands himself in trouble and the story is about Bombella’s efforts to save him,’ said Eoin, originally from Cork city.
Bombella was written for five to nine year olds and Eoin’s main aim was to entertain, but also to encourage children to develop English language skills.
‘I also wanted to help children visualise a context for emotions such as happiness and sadness, courage and fear, empathy, humour, kindness, smugness and so on. I think that the book will be attractive to parents whose children have the enthusiasm to develop their reading skills and increase their vocabulary and power of expression. It is also a “fun” novel and should appeal to young readers with imagination who enjoy fantasy and safe “non-scary” adventure.’
One thing that struck Eoin during the project was that many grand-parents would most likely like to write for their own grand-children.
‘It might be a short story, a novel or perhaps reminiscences of their own childhoods. As we get older, we tend to regret not having asked more questions and learned more about the lives of those who came before us. Committing these memories would create nice legacies and perhaps valuable records for the generations to come,’ said Eoin.
The book is over 127 pages with an average of three illustrations in each of the 11 chapters, by Siobhan Cleare from Macroom.
It’s available in Cathal O’Donovan of the Skibbereen Bookshop, Worm Books in Schull, the Bantry Bookshop and Bandon Books Plus.
