This month I was fortunate enough to get a chance to speak with Carina Ginty, the author of the Captain Cillian novels. Aimed at young children, the books help kids to “explore Ireland, discover some ocean facts, learn fun words in the Irish language, create pictures and solve puzzles.” Marketed as a superior learning tool in the classroom, Ginty and I spoke about the intricacies of teaching and writing for such a young audience.
On the topic of Marine Tourism, PHDs & Childhood Education
It all started really when I began my PHD back in 2005. It was a really unique study at the time, really applied research. The idea was: there hadn’t been any research done in Ireland looking at marine tourism and marine leisure and the economic impact and value of it. Failte Ireland and the Marine Institute in Ireland were behind the study and wanted to support it in any way they could. I won a national scholarship from Failte Ireland to do it and that really kick-started it back in 2007. Obviously being an island nation surrounded by water, it’s a very important topic,
yet we weren’t doing a lot to demonstrate the economic value or appeal, particularly from a marine leisure perspective. Other countries such as New Zealand and Australia are very good at promoting marine leisure, and we’ve gotten really good in the last few years, much better, with things like the Wild Atlantic Way and all that, and I was fascinated about the area of early participation of young people with the sea. If you get them engaged at an early age, that can lead to a lifelong relationship with the sea and marine life.
On the topic of the 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race & the origin of Captain Cillian
In 2011-12, the 11th annual Volvo Ocean around-the-world race ended with an in-port race in Galway, Ireland on 7 July 2012. The organisers were setting up schools programmes so that secondary and primary schools could tap into it, creating awareness of the seas and oceans in the classroom. So because I was doing my PHD at the time, they asked would I develop some lessons for the classroom so that all kids around the country could engage and follow the crew around the world.
The Irish Independent wanted to cover the lessons, so it was a great opportunity for me. Every week I’d have a lesson prepared along with some fun activities and facts about where the crew were and the challenges they were going to encounter. Following that experience, I thought God, wouldn’t it be great to have an Irish explorer, a character, to help young kids engage with marine life? When you look overseas, we have Thomas the Tank Engine and Mr Men books in the U.K, or we’ve got Dora the Explorer – plenty of international characters. But we’ve nothing that’s really identifiable as an authentic Irish fictional explorer, so I thought wouldn’t it be great to develop this character, Captain Cillian, that kids could relate to, to learn about the ocean. This character could explore Ireland – and in time, hopefully, the world – and learn some key words in the Irish language along the way too!
In the books, there are three themes that pop up throughout: Explore Ireland, which comes with fact boxes, Ocean facts, and Irish words. At the back of every book, every Irish word is spelt out phonetically for parents overseas who might want to teach their children a few words of our native language.
On the Topic of writing, designing and distributing the books
Together with my husband, the aim was to create this fun and educational product, that had a very Irish character: Captain Cillian. Johnny my husband, who’s a graphic designer and has been in the industry for about twenty years, bravely took up the task of designing the books. A lot of late nights and weekends were spent crafting and looking at scenes, with him taking my words and looking to translate them into pictures to create an informative piece. He had to take elements of fiction and nonfiction and blend them together while also clearly presenting all the facts and all of that, so it was a huge challenge for him.
Another big challenge was how we were going to make sure everyone heard about Captain Cillian, thinking how are we going to get the product into people’s hands, both in Ireland and overseas? We very quickly decided we had to develop a website and a shopfront. This enabled the product to get anywhere in the world, because we knew in the early days that in the publishing industry it can take a while to get established and get the product out there and into bookshops. We had some great success in the early days when we first launched, getting it into about twenty outlets. Around the same time, I was speaking to O’Brien Press, and they just loved Captain Cillian. Now they’re obviously very established in the publishing space, so more recently we have a collaboration/ agreement with them, where they represent Captain Cillian now and they’re actively selling it into shops across Ireland, which is a huge endorsement.
At the same time, we still have the online shop. We’ve noticed people overseas in America, Australia, Dubai, that are all part of this huge international diaspora, are looking for something special and unique and very Irish that they can give to their young kids. We were very lucky in that Turas na Gaeilge supported the production of a bi-lingual giftbox this year, containing all four adventures so far, a wall chart, and some stickers.
On the challenges of writing for such a young audience
I’m very lucky to have two young boys, Cillian and Breen. I also sought a lot of advice from primary school teachers, particularly about their feedback on the Irish language elements and how we were presenting the images. I work in higher education, in GMIT in Galway, and a lot of the work I’ve done over the years in education and development has been for that audience, for people who’ve just finished their leaving cert and are coming into higher education, so it’s two very different types of audiences who require different types of materials and different ways of being approached. However, the principals remain the same, because when you produce learning resources, they need to be engaging – particularly for young learners. For them as well, visuals are key: colour, the use of primary colours is crucial. In the Captain Cillian books, the use of colour is so strong and that helps keep young learners excited.
Another challenge I noticed when you’re dealing with young learners is you have to create a character to hook them in. They need a guide that’ll hold their hand throughout the book, because the learning then is really disguised. Then before they realise it they’ve learned about Donegal and Galway and all these places! So with colour and character you play to that market. You also have to carefully choose each word you use to keep the language as clear as possible. Of course, on top of these things it helps to have a big, off-the-wall imagination!
On the books’ suitability as learning tools in the classroom
They’re absolutely usable in the classroom, that’s the feedback we’ve been getting from teacher. I’d personally love to see them in every classroom in the country. So much of our curriculum is U.K-based and very influenced by British culture and heritage, so it’d be lovely to have Captain Cillian on the curriculum in all Irish schools. If you take them on an adventure through Captain Cillian, you’re actually achieving a lot over a storytime. By engaging in the learning activities with Captain Cillian you’re doing a bit of Irish, a bit of geography. There are also creative elements – colouring and storytelling – all while learning about the island of Ireland.
It’s multi- purpose, and that makes it unique because you don’t see that a lot in the learning resources being used in our schools; they tend to separate things out. There’s a growing feeling that we need to integrate these things more in the classroom so kids can make sense of what they’re being taught in relation to the world around them.
The Captain Cillian Adventure Giftbox is now available worldwide for €25.00 including free shipping. It contains all four books in the series, as well as a map of Ireland and all sorts of pirate goodies. More information can be found at captaincillian.com.
