Meet the author

Paddy Donnelly.

Writer & illustrator · Ireland

Paddy Donnelly: Irish author-illustrator of luminous picture books like The Vanishing Lake and Ava and the Acorn, warm, nature-steeped stories of curiosity and grandparent love for ages 3–8.

Paddy Donnelly is an Irish author-illustrator, now based in Belgium, who has created more than twenty-five picture books glowing with luminous, atmospheric artwork. His debut as author-illustrator, The Vanishing Lake, was inspired by a real disappearing lake near his childhood home and celebrates both scientific curiosity and the magic of imagination through a tender grandparent bond. As illustrator he brought radiant, season-drenched pictures to Lu Fraser's Ava and the Acorn, a delicate story of loss and the unbroken circle of life. Donnelly's work returns again and again to intergenerational warmth, the natural world and a child's wonder at how things really work. Twice nominated for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration and a winner at the Children's Books Ireland Awards, he is a lovely choice for read-aloud families.