Celebrate Neilly Beag's birthday with a celidah and a jig, Liam's with an April Fool's joke and the Big Boy Cousins' with a huge BBQ at the Old Castle.

Katie Morag - Media Centre - BBC Katie Morag - Media Centre - BBC

On the big evening, one of the pair loses his voice and it is down to Katie Morag McColl to save the concert from disaster. I have used this book with a year 1 class which has given me invaluable ideas for literacy, art, DT and PSHCE as well as geography. She has also written several books of travel writing for adults, and is the illustrator of a range of Hebridean stationery. This is a great way to promote discussion on the differences between these settings and begin comparing island and mainland life. Whether she is getting excited about the new pier, trying to cheer up Grannie Island in time for Granma Mainland's big day, singing naughty songs at the Grand Concert or solving riddles to get back in everyone's good books, Katie Morag is always up to something!It helps children to understand different environments and how life is different on an island compared to the city. A visitor she met on the beach one day turned out to be an editor at Macmillan Books; showing off the nearby house full of her watercolours, she was soon signed up as a contract illustrator for the company, winning an in-house contest to illustrate a version by Rumer Godden of The Old Woman who lived in a Vinegar Bottle (1972), and then three children's books featuring Janet Reachfar by the established Scottish author Jane Duncan.

Katie Morag and the Two Grandmothers - Goodreads Katie Morag and the Two Grandmothers - Goodreads

Whether she's trying to keep the secret of Baking Day from her little brother Liam, befriending a baby seal with the Holiday Children, or even smoothing out troubles between her two very different grannies, Katie Morag is always at the heart of this island and its special way of life. I thought there might have been a nice reconciliation or something at the end, but just felt like it was about to kick off. Hedderwick regularly visits primary schools, leading storytelling sessions and explaining how her books are created, often accompanied by Katie Morag's teddy bear who travels with her in his own black bag. My own children were teenagers by this point and so it was a self-indulgent nostalgia re-run of my children’s upbringing on the Isle of Coll. The stories are used to assist children's learning in different environments, how tourism is important to Island life, how boats bring supplies to people living on an Island, and to also explain the differences between natural and man made features.Mairi Hedderwick is the author and illustrator of the much loved Katie Morag series of children's books the first of which was published in 1984. After a bubble bath, and having her fleece perfumed, powdered and curled, Grannie Islands sheep is judged the hands-down trophy winner. Although she was born in Gourock, and attended the Edinburgh College of Art, the highlands and islands of Scotland have always been Mairi Hedderwick's true home.