 my way this is around the northwest for a Thursday afternoon now this is a great time if you've got kids about the house and the imagination is running wild and I was found it was a great time as well reading at night and you know things a lot of excitement obviously in the house at night if you have kids at this time of the year and then you're trying to sort of wind down and a wee story at night is great and gets the imagination going as well but I used to struggle uh kids are we my kids are we would old and I but I used to struggle when they were smaller to get a Christmas story to read and I often found that I used to you know sort of use my own imagination some of the time and and we had various stories about you know Christmas being saved and in mine it was a wee girl that saved Christmas but there's a book out now called Shamlog the Irish reindeer and in this book Santa actually it's a great wee book and in this book Santa does need help but he needs help in the form of reindeers there's a problem with the reindeers the author is Peter Grogan who joins us now and we're live on Facebook as well Peter good afternoon to you. Fame at last comes to Grogan. Live on Facebook. I have to pinch myself to see if I haven't died and gone to heaven. It's just not enough to be live on the radio anymore you've got to be live streaming as well. I had to do my hair for this head under the tap bit of a shake of the curls done. It's worked wonders. I need to start taking a leaf out of your book. I know pun intended. Absolutely I was down in that loan at the loan book shop there a couple of weeks ago and we were staying in a hotel we went up market with it and what are you doing in that loan and I said I'm actually giving some children's but she said when I saw your hair she said I knew you were a writer. It's an underhand compliment I think. I'm not too sure I'm not too sure look it it's still there. Yeah yeah and the book your book is set in well it starts it's about a journey really and it starts north of Arklow an area that I'm actually familiar with the place called Kilkara Oh yeah lovely. North Arklow definitely does and it's about a couple down there who have reigned there. Absolutely I based it in Arklow because we we holidayed as when our children were young Simon and Amanda we holidayed in Arklow and around Arklow and Red Cross and so on and then a neighbour of mine tree up as it literally could throw a stone up there and he was a pilot with Erlingus. Unfortunately two years after he retiring he passed away and I said I'm going to include Cliff the pilot as my pilot and I had I based it basically on an elderly couple down in Arklow who here on the radio that Rudolph is sick because they have no television and Maureen being the really bright one pulled back the lace curtain and said Shawnee this is the answer our own reindeer they got the government jet to British Bay and they flew out their own reindeer. The magic that happens at Christmas time we all know about it the extra magic in Lapland was that each of the ten reindeer assumed their own voice and their own personality and just like people themselves there was the timid one there was the quiet one and unfortunately there was the bully with a bit of backup as well so it is the interaction between the reindeer and Lapland I don't I cannot tell your listeners whether they say Christmas or not but I think the lesson to be learned is that even though it was a crazy idea from Maureen Shawnee and Gev for his entire backing as he has done all his life number two that there is an underlying message of an anti-bullying theme running through the book and I don't spoil anything by saying that the bullies didn't win in the end. Okay it's great because it's great fun and it's a real adventure but it's great that you were able to sort of weave in the anti-bullying theme. I think it's important and I think it was important when I was teaching myself and I was teaching up to two years ago I was in a heaven and a heaven of a school that didn't have but look at we all have little problems like that along the way but I think it is important to keep that lesson I've been doing classroom readings around the country even though it is restricted at times and it does strike a bell and they all have their own little stories whether it's from the classroom whether it's the schoolyard when there is the playground in their own area and it does ring through to them that it is a universal theme but it is also particular to their own school and their own playground but it isn't all sort of teachery teaching a lesson I've inculcated the the geography and the history around Ireland my own county of Kerry, Valencia and so on and so on and so on but look at it's good fun I think that's the main thing and it is a book like you were saying yourself with your own family it's one you can take a couple of chapters per night and continue the story or to read to a child as well it they don't have to be consummate readers to read it. No absolutely I read to them or are they able to read it themselves and it's yeah it is very accessible and one of the great things I mean a children's book it has to have pictures and in this case it's color illustrations and they're great. Beautiful a lot of work went into it our own daughter is a fashion designer in New York I guess obviously she read the book I it behoved her to read the book and she located the 29 areas in the book that was crying out for illustration and herself and our friend Elias got together and illustrated the book my wife typed every single word I could take me three weeks to do one chapter so I literally wrote it in a cafe near Malahide here came home in the evening time stood at the counter and in the best of humor of course we never had a disagreement my wife patiently typed it and my son patiently edited it the only thing I did was let my imagination just go wild. Well with your imagination and the help from everybody else it's a real family affair. Look it absolutely was and that I think was the enjoyment of it you know it was and it was something that I always wanted to do there was everybody there's a book in everybody there's a book in everybody if you put the work in and I did seriously put six months of four days a week into the book half past seven in the morning until literally 11 or 12 o'clock in the day. I wrote it in a cafe and the girl came up to me once saying Peter are you not going home today and I said yeah yeah yeah and I looked at the time it was a quarter to three and I was there from half seven. You got lost in the book. Absolutely lost in the book and in the characters and developing them and the interplay between them good fun it was very enjoyable. Well you know what the book is very enjoyable and it's great in that it's Irish and as you say you know mentioned there are different places around Ireland and different things that are quintessentially Irish and and it's got that that the whole just a big Christmas adventure and it's great for this time of the year and and and just to hold it up there for the camera as well. It reached Donegal lovely stuff. I actually wrote it as an Irish play initially coming up to the Christmas concerts there was pressure on every class with their wonderful teachers had the nativity plays in the hymns and a girl called Chloe was coming down the stairs and said padder hasn't let us down yet he'll come up with something so the pressure was on me so we make money school long way like an all Irish school but it was written in Irish as a play it's now in book form as an English book probably the best children's book ever written probably you're a retired teacher but it sounds like you're as busy as ever I'm as busy as ever I actually love dipping in this year particularly with the the less restrictions going into the classroom as I did yesterday in uh where up in Rust River the the day before that I went down in Rath National School in Port Lege and dipping at the kids at this time of the year of course fantastic all together really what do you do when you go into school is do you read bits of the book or do you I read bits of the book but the most important thing that I do in the classroom I said if you buy this book I said well and good it's available in a bookshop but the most important thing is that you learn from me today and your teachers that if you have a problem with somebody bullying you that you tell your teacher you tell your parents you tell a trusted friend number one number two the importance of writing yourself a little paragraph a little small chapter and as I have gone there I also have given them little writing projects that if they want to they can write stuff to me and we'll we'll chat about it but it is to encourage them to listen it's also an encouragement to listen to grandparents in this book because they have done the deed they have they have journeyed the journey and to give away from the ipad and listen to your grandparents for a half an hour a day listen great themes absolutely a great themes within the book but it's I mean it's not as you said earlier there it's it's not preachy it tells a great story and it takes takes us on a fabulous journey and it's shamrock the irish reindeer written by peter grogan is it is a widely available now in bookshop it's available on peter grogan books.com it's available in leber books down in sligo and in your own nick of the woods they are pawling up in max newsages in buntrana have housed shamrock for the last two years the four masters in dunigal town novel idea in ballet shannon and the bookmark in litter canny okay excellent well why is widely available then so it is yes and thanks to all of them for housing it right listen you have yourself a great christmas and we look forward to the the next one will it be a christmas book is there there's another book in you there could easily be another book and with a bit of a twist in the reindeer's tail right right we love we love it a very happy christmas to you peter and to all your listeners hake and dublin bay prawn chowder grilled trout with pak choy this christmas had a fresh idea to any table with irish seafood like organic