Second years were chosen as they don’t have the exam pressures of third years – we then chose the boys based not on who exhibited the best writing skills, but those whom we felt would grow and get the most out of the project. We felt that having one gender would work better in terms of creating a good group dynamic at that age. Joe Kelly added, “We chose the eight authors based on meetings I had with English teachers. I wouldn’t work with any author apart from him.” Kevin is a really sound fella, who loves his job and I really respect him for that. These will be distributed to over 200 schools which take part in JCSP across the country and all primary and secondary schools in the Ballymun area.Īs well as providing much needed reading material, this book has given a platform to eight new young writers, some of whom hadn’t thought about writing before, as Demetrius Sheekey, JCSP student and author explained, “I’d never really thought about writing a book or even speaking to an author before. We decided to write our own book.”ġ000 copies of ‘In Pieces’ have been professionally type-set and printed, featuring an eye-catching cover design by Michelle Anderson. So what are we to do? Should we just accept that Irish teenagers are simply going to have to make do with what is out there? In JCSP Library Trinity Comprehensive School Ballymun, we decided to take a different approach and tackle the problem head on.

We need more books that use ‘mam’ instead of ‘mum’ or that replace embarrassed with the much more descriptive ‘scarlet’. As good as similar books set in Britain, America or Australia are, they are just not our own. Unfortunately there is a dearth of books matching these specifications which are aimed at Irish readers. Joe Kelly JCSP Librarian told us, “’In Pieces’ is aimed at young people who want stories they can get through in a single sitting of about hour. ‘In Pieces’ has been created as part of an innovative writer-in-residence project which is part of the JCSP Demonstration Library Project 10 th anniversary celebrations and is set in the Natural History Museum and Glasnevin Cemetery.

Although these have been available in the UK for some time via publisher Barrington Stoke, to date, there have been very few books like this aimed at young Irish readers.

The group of eight second year students from Trinity Comprehensive School in Ballymun have teamed-up with author Kevin Mc Dermott ( Valentina, Little Island, 2012) to write their own novel, a ground-breaking book aimed at young people who prefer their books to be short and snappy.

In an innovative move that is exactly the type of entrepreneurship we need to be fostering in Ireland, a group of Ballymun secondary school students have published a new novel ‘In Pieces’ for reluctant teen readers.

National Emerging Writer Programme Overview.

Valentina by Kevin McDermott