M\u00e9abh McDonnell is children\u2019s section manager with Charlie Byrne\u2019s bookshop in Galway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She is also the author of a middle-grade novel, Into the Witchwood. Her YA book, Any Way You Slice It, is available to pre-order.<\/p>\n
How did you get into bookselling?<\/p>\n
I have always had a big interest in children\u2019s books and children\u2019s writing, and would have been aware of what was going on in children\u2019s books and publishing in general.<\/p>\n
I used to work as a sub-editor in a regional newspaper, and about six years ago, I was looking for a change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I had always been interested in working in a bookshop, and I sent my CV into Charlie\u2019s and, as it happened, they were looking for someone who had an interest in children\u2019s books.<\/p>\n
Within about two weeks, it was like: \u2018This is where I am meant to be.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n I would have been familiar with Charlie\u2019s from a fairly young age, and I was a long-time customer before I started working there.\n <\/p>\n
Sometimes I have a nice little \u2018pinch me\u2019 moment where I think about how excited my younger self would be if she knew I had a copy of the keys.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is particularly rewarding and special to be a children\u2019s bookseller.<\/p>\n
What does your role involve?<\/p>\n
My days are often very different. I would generally come in and maybe go through the previous day in sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, at some point during the day, we would get deliveries in and I put out new books.<\/p>\n
I spend a certain amount of my day researching new titles, and maybe on the phone with sales reps or meeting them about books we want to buy in.<\/p>\n
\n At certain times of the year, I might go over to the UK to buy new stock.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
If it\u2019s a Saturday, we have a free story-time session that I run where we read from picture books for about an hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On other days, I might have a children\u2019s book club on, where a group of kids come in to talk about a different book every month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We also might have author visits or school visits. For example, today I was down at a school talking to them about stocking a new library.<\/p>\n
What do you like most about it?<\/p>\n
My favourite part is talking to a child about a book that I\u2019ve recommended to them and seeing it click with them, where they have fallen in love with not just the book but with the idea of reading and they want to find that magic again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing like seeing that, particularly with children who maybe were reluctant readers or thought reading wasn\u2019t for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I believe that there is a book out there for every child.<\/p>\n
What do you like least about it?<\/p>\n
If somebody is looking for something specific and I don\u2019t have it or I can\u2019t find it. I will try to order it for them, or I try to track down a copy, but sometimes you just can\u2019t quite lay your hand on something.<\/p>\n
Luckily, it doesn\u2019t happen that often and usually you can find something else.<\/p>\n
As we often say about Charlie\u2019s, you\u2019ll always go away with something.<\/p>\n
Three desert island books<\/p>\n
Philip Pullman\u2019s Northern Lights was one of the first books I read as a teenager that I felt really captured something bigger than itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a book that I return to a lot and it still makes me cry.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m cheating a bit with the next one, which would be the Ursula Le Guin Earthsea Cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I remember being amazed by the scope of it and by the sophistication of the writing \u2014 it felt so philosophical and magical.<\/p>\n
My third pick would be I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith \u2014 I remember reading it for the first time when I was about 17 and being so captivated by the main character, Cassandra Mortmain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It sat perfectly between a classic novel and one that was more modern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"M\u00e9abh McDonnell is children\u2019s section manager with Charlie Byrne\u2019s bookshop in Galway.\u00a0 She is also the author of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[10112,3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-164329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books-features-and-news","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114639329374908532","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}