‘A grown-up audience will stifle sneezes, but a kid will explode with joyous force’ – Shane Hegarty on reading to children

The writer on how book readings have shaped his work – and how they always deliver plenty of fun

Author Shane Hegarty speaking to the audience at the 2019 Shaking Bog Festival.

Shane Hegarty

When you become a children’s writer, you really do have to get used to your audience losing teeth while you’re talking to them. It happens with a surprising regularity.

Often it will be announced by a flutter of excitement from a patch of the room, or on occasion with a shout and triumphant raising of the newly freed incisor. Sometimes you’ll only learn about it all afterwards when the kid ambles up with a book in one hand and a freshly uprooted tooth in the other.