Adventure to Mars

TOMMY Torpey’s Mars Adventure is the first children’s book to be written by Pat Mulcahy and is to be launched on September 11.

Pat, a native of Killaloe, now lives just over the Tipperary border in Bushfield, outside Ballina. A retired auctioneer, he says the inspiration for the book came from the children of a local national school.

“What happened was I wrote a book of poetry and it was selling locally. I met the teacher from Boher National School, which is outside Ballina. She said to me one day that she was using that book as part of the curriculum. I said I was delighted to hear that and she asked me would I come and talk to the children, which I did.

“Some of them were asking me where the poems originated from and so forth and then one little lad put his hand up and asked if I ever wrote a children’s book. I said no, I didn’t actually, but maybe you’ve given me an idea. Then I said I’d come back to them in a few weeks with an idea for a story and asked them to do some drawings for me and that we’d see how we got on.”

The book is suitable for nine to ten-year-olds. Pat said he was a little constrained by finances. “I was kind of confined with costs to a book of 24 to 28 pages. I also had to staple it rather than bind it, because that’s quite expensive.”

The story is left open so there may be a further adventure for Tommy Torpey. All the proceeds from the book will go to Pieta House, the suicide prevention organisation.

“I picked Pieta House because they deal with suicide and people who might be thinking of suicide and we had a tragedy in our own family in recent times.”

He says he would be happy to visit schools to talk about reading. “I’m quite happy to call to any school that would like me to call, to talk to kids about writing and reading. I’ve always believed in reading and my grandchildren would never get anything from me for birthdays or Christmas only books.”