Magic Vacations are delighted to announce that Kinsale has been included on the Disney Map – and Goofy has a GIANT surprise for you

Simply log onto our website

www.MagicVacations.ie

Scroll down to the bottom left  of the page – enter Kinsale Cork Ireland in the box with Goofy – and see what happens!!

This link has been sent to our 16,000 +  facebook fans and 15,000  database friends  – putting Kinsale firmly on the Disney Map

Yours Magically

John Barrett

Managing Director

Magic Vacations Travel Group

Tel:             353 21 4700568

Fax: 353 21 4706609

john.barrett@magicvacations.ie

www.magicvacations.ie

www.thebigapple.ie

- Saturday 14th April, 2012 @ 10:00am

100km

€35 for the day’s event in aid of:
Sick children and the National Rehabilitation Centre

See more at: http://www.kinsalecyclechallenge.com/

Easter Egg Hunt!

Help! The Easter Bunny has been kidnapped!

We need your help to find the kidnapper, free the Easter Bunny, and to discover the Easter Eggs!

Book-related treasure hunt for children of all ages.

The hunt is on, Sunday April 8^th 1-5pm

Storytime

Our special Easter Storytime will be held on Saturday April 7^th at 10am.

**Admission Free**

Stories, songs and rhymes for little ones (toddlers, pre-schoolers etc).  Children must be accompanied by an adult.   If you would like to receive a Storytime reminder text a day or two before the event each month, please let me know, and I’ll keep you posted.

World Book Day

To celebrate World Book Day on Thursday 1^st March, we held a Design a Bookmark competition.  Illona Perret from St Joseph’s National School was this year’s winner and her splendid design has been printed onto our own bookmark , and is available in the shop, while stocks last.

World Book Night

World Book Night falls on April 23^rd this year, and is a global celebration of reading and books, in which 20,000 passionate volunteers give out free books in their communities.

Bookstór is getting involved this year, and as well as sharing a book by one of my favourite authors,  our celebrations will also include a Spring Book Fair and Children’s Book Exchange on Saturday April 21^st. We’ll have a glorious selection of used books for sale, we’ll be buying your old books (€1.50 per book in store credit), and there will be a big, free children’s books swap, as well as sharing seasonal goodies and collecting used books for local charities.

Book Club Reminder

Bookstór hosts a book club once a month, usually on a Thursday.  A different book is discussed each month over tea & coffee.

The next book club meeting will take place on Thursday 22^nd April.

To reserve your place at the book club please call in, email or phone with your name and phone number.  The book club is free but places are limited.

If you’d like to suggest a book for a future meeting please let us know!

Books of the Month

Quiet by Susan Cain

In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who is comfortable “putting himself out there.”

In her book, Susan Cain argues that introverts tend to prefer quiet, minimally stimulating environments, while extroverts need higher levels of stimulation to feel their best, and points out that introversion is different from shyness. Shyness, she argues, is the fear of negative judgment, while introversion is simply the preference for less stimulation. Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; introversion is not.

Our schools, workplaces, and religious institutions are designed for extroverts. Many organize workers and students into groups, believing that creativity and productivity comes from a gregarious place. From Darwin to Picasso however, our greatest thinkers have often worked in solitude, and Cain examines lots of research on the pitfalls of group work.

She also explores how the brain chemistry of introverts and extroverts differ, and how society misunderstands and undervalues introverts. She aims to provide introverts the tools to better understand themselves and take full advantage of their strengths.

Following the success of last years event when 100 lanterns were released from James Fort accompanied by fire dancers and drummers during the ‘Earth Hour’ of darkness, this year Transition Town Kinsale is producing a candlelit concert of acoustic music in the 800 year old St Multose Church, Kinsale. This will be a free event open to all in the community.

From Transition Town Kinsale:

We are inviting people to join us 7.45pm and we will be powering off at 8.00pm.

We are asking all in the community to mark the hour (8.30-9.30pm) by switching off their lights for the hour, or even for 1 minute at 8.30pm if this is not feasible for health and safety reasons.

To go ‘beyond the hour’ we are also inviting children to make a pledge e.g. turn the light off in their bedroom when they are not there; walk to school one day a week if this feasible; plant something to eat in their garden or a herb for their kitchen window. These written pledges will be placed in our ‘beyond the hour’ box when the children come up to light their tea lights as part of the finale at the concert. We would extend this invitation to all in the community. Some ideas on how to ‘powerdown’ can be found in the attachment.

Do please join us. And let us know what you are doing: we would like to highlight everything that is happening in the town on our website, the Earth Hour website and in any publicity we might get for this event.

http://www.transitiontownkinsale.org/

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade is back and the people and businesses of the town have put together an amazing weekend to celebrate. Starting with the Blessing of the Shamrock this evening, then an amazing line up for the whole day tomorrow: Spring Fair, Children’s Art Exhibition, Shop Window Competition, Busking & Street Entertainment Competition — and of course the Parade!  Saturday evening there’s even more entertainment with a Ceili Mor and then the spectacular Maritime Parade.

The Parade itself starts at 4pm, but plan to come early and stay late so you don’t miss out on the fun!

Click here to download our St. Patrick’s Day Poster with Schedule and Map

She will receive a copy of her work on canvas courtesy of Canvas Works Kinsale as her prize as well as a €75 voucher for the Kinsale OEC.

The winner of the 4-7 year old age group was Ryan O’Donnell age 7 who will also receive a canvas of his art work and a €75 voucher for the KOEC.

Second Place/Special merit are:

Ilona Perret and Marta Rankiewicz from St Joseph’s N.S.  They will each receive a €25 for Cooleez Children’s Boutique in Kinsale.

Runners up from Summercove were:

Kristen Cavanagh – Special Mention
Gracie Plunket
Lauren Green
Ronan Geary

Runners up from St Joseph’s N.S. were:

Polly O’Brian – Special Mention
Sarah Sheedy
Szymon Majewski
Carey MacGaharan
Kriska O’Riordan
Paulina Matoicinskaite

The above art work has been mounted courtesy of Studio One, Kinsale, and will be available to take away after the festival weekend.

Make your boat part of it!

It will be a fun night for your family and friends, so don’t miss out as numbers will be limited.  We need all types of boats and all sizes.

Please register now!!!

To register your boat text your name, your contact number & your boat’s name to:

Pat Hegarty
086 0603247

Wild Goose has won Supplier of the Year & Best New Product at the prestigious annual awards given by the North American Celtic Trade Association and Enterprise Ireland.

Voted by NACTA members, Gift Supplier of the Year is the top award and is given in recognition for the excellent service & recent innovation provided by the Studio in North America. Best New Product was awarded to the Celtic Collection of bronze decorations which were developed & launched in September 2011.

The presentation was made to Wild Goose Managing Director Jamie McCarthy-Fisher and Sales Director Clive Salter at a ceremony in Dublin last week by Association President Fran Siefert, who also runs Ballyhugh Irish Imports, a shop in Audubon, New Jersey. John Perry, Minister of State with special responsibility for Small Business, was also on hand to offer his congratulations on the Studio’s achievements.

NACTA is the trade association for retailers of products from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Celtic Isles and has over 200 members in the USA and Canada.

Wild Goose Studio, which has been designing and making gifts in Kinsale since 1970, was shortlisted for Gift Supplier of the Year in 2011 & runner-up in the NACTA Award for the Best Packaging & Presentation category in 2008.

See more about Wild Goose Studio and purchase items online at www.wildgoosestudio.com

BOOKSTÓR NEWS

World Book Day

To celebrate World Book Day on Thursday 1^st March, we are holding a Design a Bookmark competition. The competition is open to everyone under 18 years old, and entry forms are available in the shop, or by email. Entries must be in by next Wednesday, 22^ndFebruary. The winning bookmark will be printed on one side of Bookstór’s own bookmark and distributed in the shop. Our favourite entries will also receive Bookstór vouchers, as well as fame and glory, and all entries will be on display in the shop from March 1^st.

World Book Day is the biggest celebration of books and reading in the world. Every child will receive a €1.50 World Book Day Book token from their school, which they can exchange for one of eight specially produced World Book day books or get €1.50 off any other book.

World Book Night

World Book Night is on April 23^rd 2012 and is a celebration of reading and books, in which 20,000 passionate volunteers give out free books in their communities.

World Book Night will see Givers across the land hand out twenty four copies of their chosen book (from a list of twenty five titles), to remind the world of the bounty of books. Local Givers can collect their books from Bookstór in the week before April 23^rd.

World Book Night’s charitable mission is to promote education and literacy by focusing on the enjoyment and liberation that reading brings, and to inspire the love of reading.

April 23^rd is a symbolic date for world literature. It is both the birth and death day of Shakespeare, and was chosen by UNESCO as the international day of the book. For further information please see www.worldbooknight.org, where you will find details of how to apply to be a giver, the 25 titles on offer and so on.

“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face…It is one of the few havens remaining where [your] mind can get both provocation and privacy.”

Edward P. Morgan

Kinsale Pink Ribbon Walk Pink Promotion

The Kinsale Pink Ribbon Walk takes place on Sunday March 4^th, and Bookstór is delighted to be supporting the event as a Pink Partner. On the weekend of March 3^rd and 4^th, we are going to donate €1 of every €20 spent in Bookstór to Action Breast Cancer.

Cork Spring Poetry Festival 15-18 February 2012 (at the Metropole Hotel)

Readings Workshops  The Gregory O’Donoghue
Poetry Competition

In the past thirty years Cork has been prodigious in fostering poets, and the first  Cork Spring Poetry Festival starts tomorrow. The Munster Literature Centre has been presenting spring literary festivals in Cork for over fifteen years. This year the organisers decided to make the festival exclusively poetry in acknowledgement of the preference for poetry by our past Spring Festival audiences and also to celebrate Cork’s poetic heritage at a time when the country has just acquired its first poet President.

This year at our festival there will be poets from eight countries. From Ireland there will be poets writing in Irish such as Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Irish poets writing in English such as Kerry Hardie and Thomas McCarthy, as well as many others, both established poets and some with their first book published.

Poets from Canada, Croatia, Italy, New Zealand and Slovenia will also be represented. Emerging poets will be given a voice in the PreBooked Event. There will be a reading by the prize-winner of the third Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize and poets wishing to hone their skills can sign up for the four day Masterclass Workshop with Greg Delanty.

You are invited to reacquaint yourself with poets you know well and enjoy the genius of poets who are new to you.

For more info and to download a brochure go to www.corkpoetryfest.net

Book Club Reminder

Bookstór hosts a book club once a month, usually on a Thursday.  A different book is discussed each month over tea & coffee.

The next book club meeting will take place on Thursday 23^rd February when we’ll be discussing Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The March Book Club will take place on Thursday March 22^nd at 7pm, when we’ll be discussing The Tiger’s Wifeby Tea Obreht

To reserve your place at the book club please call in, email or phone with your name and phone number.  The book club is free but places are limited.

If you’d like to suggest a book for a future meeting please let us know!

Books of the Month

Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton

In Religion for Atheists Alain de Botton argues that although some in the West struggle with organised religion, many recognize that religions have much to teach. Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton proposes that we should look to religions for insights into how to build community, cultivate loving relationships, allow art and architecture to enrich our lives, overcome rampant egotism & feelings of inadequacy; in short, into how to live.

He has said that a false choice is often presented between faith and scepticism. “Either you have to accept lots of beliefs that are unbelievable or you end up in a spiritual and aesthetic wasteland…But maybe the choice doesn’t have to be that stark.”

As a way of bridging that divide, de Botton envisages secular spaces for contemplation called Temples for Atheists. Nurturing humility and stillness would be a wonderful place to start. “Often a religious building plays around with our perspective: it’s very large, or it’s very old or both. It recalibrates us in space or time, so you walk in and feel tiny.”

De Botton writes with elegance and wit, and this is an engaging and interesting meditation on religion, beauty, architecture, community and the meaning and significance of contemplation.

Children’s Book of the Month

The Tale of Georgie Grub By Jeanne Willis Illustrated by Margaret Chamberlain

The Tale of Georgie Grub is a brilliant cautionary tale of what happens to a boy who refuses to bathe. This is black comedy, without excluding sensitive souls, and muckiness, without being unpleasant.

It is a vibrant and funny story, with a wonderful rhythmic text that even very young children will enjoy. Because Georgie’s grubbiness has been conjured so brilliantly in the tale, his final comeuppance is hilarious, rather than bleak, in the best tradition of Hilaire Belloc’s cautionary tales.

Margaret Chamberlain’s illustrations are as wonderful as ever, with a friendly and charming style, and there is plenty going on to reward subsequent readings. A winner!

Storytime

Our next Storytime will be held on Saturday March 3^rd at 10am.

**Admission Free**

Stories, songs and rhymes for little ones (toddlers, pre-schoolers etc).  Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Storytime has been held every month since 2006

If you would like to receive a Storytime reminder text a day or two before the event each month, please let me know, and I’ll keep you in the loop.