Ballymote native pens a new children’s book
Ballymote journalist Alison Healy will see her dream come true this week with the publication of her first children’s book on Thursday (April 5 th).
How Billy Brown Saved the Queen is being published by Little Island Books. The Dublin-based publisher has described her as “a new Irish author with a wicked sense of humour” and says the story is a “fantastically funny adventure for young readers”. The book is aimed at children aged about eight and over.
Alison Healy (47) has worked as a journalist for The Irish Times and The Farmers’ Journal for more than two decades but she credits The Sligo Champion with giving her the first big break. “I wanted to be an author from a very young age and someone advised me to get some writing published,” she says. “So, when I was 15 I did a 24-hour fast for Concern, wrote an account of it and sent it to the then Sligo Champion editor, the late Seamus Finn. He very kindly published it to my delight. And then he published a few more pieces.”
Buoyed by the success, she decided to study journalism in college and when it came to doing a month-long placement in a newspaper, The Sligo Champion was her first port of call.
“I still remember walking in the doors of the office, which was in Wine Street, back then. I was a total bag of nerves. But they couldn’t have been nicer or more encouraging to me in the newsroom. It was a fantastic learning experience for anyone thinking of a career in journalism,” she says.
She went on to work for The Farmers’ Journal for eight years and then The Irish Times, where she has worked since. She took a career break almost three years ago for family reasons and wrote the children’s book when her four children were in school.
But this is not her first book. Penguin Ireland asked her to ghost write the autobiography of Anna May McHugh last year. The publisher described Queen of the Ploughing as “a captivating read, full of warmth, lively stories, unexpected insights and Anna May’s sharp observations”. The paperback version is due out in May.
“But my first dream was always to write children’s books, so I decided that if I didn’t do it during the career break, I’d never do it,” she says.
How Billy Brown Saved the Queen was inspired by her own childhood, in particular her lack of prowess when it came to sport. “Billy Brown has no talent on the athletics track or in the sports fields. He is, of course based on me. The Community Games were a major thing when I was growing up in Ballymote in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” she recalls. “My speedy sisters routinely qualified for the Sligo games with ease, whether they were running, hurdling or doing gymnastics. Me? I never got past the Ballymote heats, not even when I tried my hand at draughts.
“I remember complaining bitterly to my mother that I was good at nothing and she tried to console me by saying I was good at school, especially reading. But who wants to hear that when they’re ten and coming last in the 100 metre sprint, again?”
Looking back now, she says her mother was right. She was good at reading, thanks to the hundreds of hours spent in Ballymote library under the kind and watchful eye of Mrs Ann Flanagan. “My sister Frances and I would walk the mile or so into Ballymote every Saturday morning for the library. It was the highlight of the week.”
She says she would never have become a writer without Ballymote library. “The library opened up a whole new world to us. We loved to read and there’s no way we could have accessed all those books without the library. I remember how I could barely stop myself from sitting down on side of the road and opening one of the books on the way home from the library. No matter how I tried to savour the books, they were always finished before the weekend was over.”
How Billy Brown Saved the Queen tells the story of the bright boy who solves a tricky maths problem for Queen Alicia. She is so taken with the little red-head that she moves into his home for an exciting and incident-filled few days. The queen encounters a washing machine for the first time, discovers the delights of the bottle bank and tries out the trampoline.
Alison Healy’s second children’s book has been submitted to Little Island Books and she is working on a third one before her return to The Irish Times newsroom in July.
“Getting this book published has been a wonderful experience,” she says. “There is so much competition out there when it comes to publishing children’s books, but Little Island has been so supportive and encouraging. Just like Mrs Flanagan in Ballymote library all those years ago.”
*How Billy Brown Saved the Queen is published by Little Island Books and available from all book shops from Thursday, April 5 th, or can be ordered from http://littleisland.ie/books/ billy-brown-saved-queen/.