Biographical note

Paddy Donnelly is an Irish author and illustrator living in Belgium, who has illustrated many children’s books, including Fox & Son Tailers, The Golden Hare, The Vanishing Lake and Dodos Are Not Extinct. He has been nominated twice for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration and in 2023 he won the Judges’ Special Award at the KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards. His books have been published worldwide, in many languages.   Paddy introduced us to the imaginative, little fox Rory in Fox & Son Tailers, which was featured as a World Book Day book in 2025, was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2022, and won the Literacy Association of Ireland Biennial Children’s Book Award in 2023. He hopes that this latest Ballybrush story will encourage parents and children to sit down and make a book together – just like Badger and Rory.