ACTOR AND WRITER Chris O’Dowd has signed a worldwide deal to write books for children based on his Moone Boy TV show.

The Roscommon native will work with his Moone Boy screenwriter Nick Vincent Murphy on two novels for Macmillan.

The pair recently won an International Emmy Award for their work on the TV series.

Four publishing houses fought for the rights to the books, the first of which will be published in autumn 2014.

The illustrated books will be aimed at readers aged eight and over, and will feature illustrations by Cartoon Saloon, the Kilkenny-based Academy Award-winning animation studio.

The Moone Boy series is set in Boyle in Roscommon and follows 11-year-old Martin, his family, and his imaginary friend, played by O’Dowd.

The first series has been broadcast on Sky One, with the second following in the New Year. A third series is in post-production.

O’Dowd and Murphy have said:

Throughout the first three series of Moone Boy, it’s often occurred to us that there’s so much more we could do with the world of the imaginary friends, but the hassle of having to film things with our big clumsy cameras made it tricky to delve too much into it in the show.There will be lots of jokes and we hope that parents will want to steal the books from their children to read them too.

We’re really excited to be working with Macmillan. We also think it’s really nice of them to allow our families to move into their offices, it seemed like an odd invitation at the time, but we’re all very excited. Unless we misheard what they said about that detail.

O’Dowd is also currently preparing for his Broadway debut. He’s set to appear as Lennie alongside James Franco in Of Mice and Men in the spring.

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