A WEST Belfast man has begun his journey as a children's author after his first series of books were launched to the public last weekend.
Antoin McCaffrey has a passion for Gaelic Games having been involved with the national sport for over three decades. Now he has launched his own brand new personalised GAA-themed childrens' book series, ‘My Magic Gloves’.
Antoin said his two daughters, Aoife and Meabh, inspired him to write his own children's stories, after the girls had grown tired of the same stories being retold at bedtime.
“So I’d end up creating stories," he said. "Aoife was the superhero in my head and it went from her being a hero, to her scoring the winner in her team at the weekend, but it’s something I always thought was great.”
Antoin believes that a conversation with a parent after the girls' training one afternoon is what finally propelled him to try and make the idea a bigger concept than just his daughters' bed time tale.
Antoin's debut book, Aoife's Magic Gloves, was inspired by his daughters' love for reading
“I wrote the first book for Aoife, she loved it. I coach both my daughters' Gaelic football teams and I mentioned it to a few of the parents about the book promoting women’s sports for young girls. A few of them loved it, so I made a few books for some of the kids. A parent then approached me and basically said that her daughter loved the book so much that it stopped her from quitting the sport – something that meant a lot to me.
“From then on I ran with it. You know it’s not easy being a young girl trying to break into sports, it’s a male dominated field. Me and my brother had these books available to us growing up you know, Antoin scoring for Manchester United etc, but for girls there was nothing so I feel like this is a good chance to tap into the market.”
The West Belfast man believes his role as Games Development Officer helped him massively when creating a book for a target audience of young children, but also a tale that teaches them the clear message of self-belief.
“I’ve had a career as a Games Development Officer, been all over the country working with children in nursery and primary schools and my whole job is to get children involved in Gaelic Games. I know what they like and what puts them off. I have two girls so I’m experienced in that department.
“It’s a great story about a young girl who thinks she has a pair of magic Gaelic gloves and she plays a terrific game for her club side and is the star of the team. But at the end of the book she realises that the gloves were not in fact magic, but it was all her own ability and once she learned to believe in herself that was the real magic.”
Antoin’s book launched last weekend, but he said it was a strenuous process just to get to the publishing stage.
“For the last year I’ve been spending every spare moment on the book. Once I had the belief it could genuinely be a success I dedicated time learning how to make pages, create the art style and the characters.”
“I researched and have over 200 girls names on books and a few boys ones too, but I wanted to get a handful in each name published and now I have over 400 books in the house ready to be sold after the website and social media sites launched.
“I made sure that every girl can be represented, not only in name, but eyes, skin, hair colour – anything that could make someone feel more connected to the characters of the book, it is there.”
Antoin has now launched all the social media pages – including a website – for his newest story, but the work does not stop there as he hopes he can produce an Irish language version of the story in the near future.
“Once we get it properly publicised we are looking at maybe some translations into Irish too, but at the minute it’s just the English version.
“I’ve also been working on a second book, with a different story and will hopefully get it sorted for next Christmas. It’ll be very club themed and I’ve tied in with a number of Belfast-based clubs so hopefully they’d be interested in that for their own juveniles.”
To order your very own copy of ‘My Magic Gloves’ follow the link to www.mygaelichero.com or check Antoin’s social media channels on Facebook and Instagram at MyGaelicHero.
