This book examines how a young traveller, Katie deals with living in the settled community after her caravan home burns down. It's the character that gives you the book. If Katie had been a different character, you know, Blue Horse would have been a very different book, Colon-McKenna said.
Under the Hawthorne Tree, Wildflower Girl, Fields of Home
The trilogy looks at the plight of three children orphaned by the death of their parents during the Great Famine. The three children struggle to survive starvation, emigrate and savour life in the United States and later return home to their old farm in Ireland. The first image I got of Peggy was out on the deck (of the ship going to the US) she would stand on the deck and she had these straws in her hand. And she was throwing the straws away and they were catching the breeze and letting the breeze catch her hair, and then I knew that the book was going to be about emigration, Conlon-McKenna said.
No Goodbye
No Goodbye delves deep into the experiences four children have when their mother leaves the family. During Colon-McKennas childhood things were sometimes difficult at home, my mum and dad weren't very happily married. I knew that my sister and I acted very differently to growing up in the same house. We dealt with the things differently and I wanted to show to kids that one person can go smoothly through it and another person can get very angry, another person can get really scared. I wanted to show how four children living under the same roof and the same thing is happening to the four of them is totally different and how their reactions were totally different.
Safer Harbour
Two children evacuated from London during World War II come to live in Ireland and have to find ways to develop a relationship with their stern grandfather. Sophie dictated that she was a control freak and she hated the war and she didn't want to go to Ireland with her mum and dad and she thought everything to be the same and of course her grandfather was regimented and he wanted the same order as well and they clashed, she said.
About the team
This article was produced by editor Paul Bradley, 14, and reporters Victoria Murray, 13 and Amanda McAteer, 12. It was published on the Belfast Festival website.
