Olive Mooney

Photo with author's permission

On Thursday 25th April we welcomed Olive Mooney, author of The Chronicles of Cadaver College, to St Columba’s.

She read to an entranced audience of Primary and 1st Formers from the first volume of the series, The Book of Ornis, in which young Simon de Bruin discovers himself in a very strange place. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, and he has barely arrived before his leg is savaged by an invisible hound. What’s more, the strange people he meets seem to expect something from him—something heroic—yet at the same time they seem disappointed that he’s not somehow...bigger. And so begin the Chronicles.

After the reading we got the opportunity to ask questions. Olive, choosing from a sea of waving hands, was asked such things as: do you write longhand or type, do you have a special room to work in, who was your favourite author, what was your worst editing experience, do you like children, and would St Columba’s be a good location for the film version? All of which she answered with aplomb, and we finished a very entertaining morning with a book-signing session.