The 'other' Paul Howard: Wicklow author on missing out on the Belfast illustrator's laurels

What are the odds that on an island as small as ours, that you would meet someone who not only shares your name, but your career path too?

Paul Howard: no, not that one, the other Paul Howard

The call came out of the blue.

“Is that Paul Howard?” the voice on the phone asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Who’s this?” It was the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen’s University Belfast.

“We were wondering,” the voice said, “if you’d like to be our Children’s Writing Fellow for 2022-23?” “Oh, er, wow,” I spluttered. “What exactly would that involve?” “Visiting schools all over the North,” the voice said, “reading and talking to children about writing, then judging competitions.” So like a Children’s Laureate, I thought.

“I’d love that,” I said.

“Great,” the voice replied.

I thought, I’ve got this children’s writing thing cracked. I’d only been a children’s author for two years. I’d published three books – the first two instalments in the Gordon’s Game trilogy, which I co-wrote with former Ireland rugby star Gordon D’Arcy, and Aldrin Adams and the Cheese Nightmares, a fantasy adventure about a boy who, when he eats cheese just before he goes to sleep, can access other people’s nightmares and help them with the things that frighten them in the night.

And here I am, I thought, the Children’s Laureate for Northern Ireland!

The good news kept on coming. The position came with a bursary, provided by Atlantic Philanthropies as part of their ten-year commitment to the project. The money wasn’t going to change my life, but I had my eye on a Bang & Olufsen speaker system and it would allow me to wire my entire house for sound.

“The only issue,” I said, “is that I have a lot of work on, so I’d need a bit of advance notice before events, given that I’d be driving up from Wicklow.” There was a moment of silence on the phone. Then the voice said, “When did you move to Wicklow?” “Nearly twenty years ago,” I said.

There was an even longer moment of silence. I feared that I’d talked myself out of the gig. My concern about the workload involved had been mistaken for a lack of interest. I stressed that I really wanted the position – we’d just have to work out a schedule.

“Er,” the voice said, “can I phone you back tomorrow?” I was still excited about the offer. But I decided to keep the circle of knowledge tight for the moment, telling only my family, my wife, her family, a couple of dozen friends, including three journalists, the man who power-washes my fascia boards and a woman I fell into casual conversation with in a dry-cleaners in Donnybrook.

'THE MOST DIFFICULT PHONE CALL'

The following morning, the voice was back on the phone, saying, “This is the most difficult phone call I’ve ever had to make.” “Why?” I asked. “What’s happened?” “Look, there’s no easy way of saying this,” the voice said, “but we rang the wrong Paul Howard.” 

The voice was highly embarrassed and deeply apologetic and said they thought they’d been talking to the children’s illustrator based in Belfast. I said it was fine – it might make a good anecdote one day – and we chuckled about the fact that there were two Paul Howards involved in children’s books on this tiny, biscuit crumb of an island.

I started to take an interest then in my namesake who denied me my state-of-the-art sound system. I went to Dubray Books and I bought Jill Tomlinson’s ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’, which was beautifully illustrated by ‘the right Paul Howard’, as he’s known in our house now. I bought ‘Full, Full, Full of Love’ by Trish Cooke and ‘The Burpee Bears’ by lockdown legend Joe Wicks. Paul’s artwork in them is absolutely wonderful. I became a big fan.

Then our paths kept almost crossing at children’s book events and literature festivals. Someone would say, “You should have been here this morning – you missed the other Paul Howard’s drawing showcase!” or, “It’s a pity you have to leave tonight – the other Paul Howard is doing a Build a Story workshop for children in the morning.” And at the same time, I kept hearing people raving about the work he was doing as the Seamus Heaney Centre’s Children’s Writing Fellow, visiting classrooms, meeting thousands of children and helping to foster in them a love of reading and writing.

This week, I grasped the nettle and got in touch, and we ended up having a very pleasant conversation on the phone. He’s a funny and very engaging man. He’s just started the second and final year of his fellowship and he’s loving it.

“I draw with the children and tell stories,” he said, explaining his work to me, “and I use that to try to encourage them to create their own. A lot of them have read The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and I say to them, ‘Okay, what would the owl do next?’ and they produce these four- and five-page stories, which are just brilliant.” 

Listening to his enthusiasm, I can’t help but feel that the Seamus Heaney Centre got the right Paul Howard in the end. He hadn’t heard the story of how close they came to getting the other one. I explained how it happened – it seems that someone in the office said they were going to offer Paul Howard the gig and someone else said, “Oh, I met him at a Fighting Words event in Dublin last week – I’ve got his number here!” – and we laughed about the sheer small-islandness of the story.

As it happens, the two Paul Howards thing had followed him around too. “I did an event in a school in Portrush,” he said, “and when I turned up, half the kids in the class had copies of Aldrin Adams and the Cheese Nightmares in front of them, which they wanted me to sign. I thought, ‘How am I going to break it to them that I’m not that Paul Howard?’” 

• ‘Aldrin Adams and the Legend of NemeSwiss’ – the second book in the series – written by Paul Howard and illustrated by Lee Cosgrove, is in bookshops now.