Margaret Mahy

Margaret Mahy
Occupation	Novelist, Librarian
Website
http://library.christchurch.org.nz/MargaretMahy/

Margaret Mahy ONZ (born in Whakatane, New Zealand on 21 March 1936) is a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. While the plots of many of her books have strong supernatural elements, her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up.

Her books The Haunting and The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance both received the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association. She has written a little less than 50 novels, including the recent Alchemy in 2002. Among her children's books, A Lion in the Meadow and The Seven Chinese Brothers and The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate are considered national classics. Her novels have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Catalan and Afrikaans. In addition, some stories have been translated into Russian, Chinese and Icelandic.

For her contributions to children's literature she has been made a member of the Order of New Zealand. The Margaret Mahy Medal Award was established by the New Zealand Children's Book Foundation in 1991 to provide recognition of excellence in children's literature, publishing and literacy in New Zealand. In 2006 she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award (known as the Little Nobel Prize) in recognition of a "lasting contribution to children's literature".

Margaret Mahy currently resides on Banks Peninsula, Canterbury, in the South Island of New Zealand.

Early life

Mahy has five siblings, of which she is the eldest. She was raised in her birthplace of Whakatane. Her father was a bridge builder and often told his children adventure stories which later influenced Mahy's writing. Her mother was a teacher. She wrote her first published story when she was 7, called "Harry Is Bad". She showed it to her class to let them know that they could write a story whatever their age. She went to the local high school, where she was acknowledged as a talented swimmer.

Education

Mahy completed her undergraduate BA at Auckland University College (1952-1954) and Canterbury University College, graduating in 1955. In 1956 She then trained as a librarian at the New Zealand Library School, Wellington.

Career

She worked as a librarian in Petone, the School Library Service in Christchurch, and in 1976 was appointed Children's Librarian at Canterbury Public Library.

During this time she had many stories published in the New Zealand School Journal, and her first book, "A Lion in the Meadow", in 1969.

She became a fulltime writer in 1980, and has gone on to win numerous awards for her books, and honours for her contribution to New Zealand and children's literature, including an honorary doctorate in the form of a Doctor of Letters from the University of Canterbury.

In 1985 she established the Margaret Mahy Fees Scholarship at University of Canterbury.

Awards

• Carnegie Medal, 1982, for The Haunting
• Carnegie Medal, 1984, for The Changeover
• Best young adult novel, New Zealand post Children's book awards, 2003 for Alchemy
• Phoenix Award 2005 for The Catalogue of the Universe
• Phoenix Honor Book 2006 for The Tricksters
• Sir Julius Vogel Award 2006 for services to New Zealand science fiction and fantasy
• Hans Christian Andersen Award 2006
• Phoenix Award 2007 for Memory

Bibliography

• A Lion in the Meadow (1972)
• Ultra-Violet Catastrophe! (1975)
• The Great Piratical Rambustification & The Librarian and the Robbers (1978) with Quentin Blake (collection)
• Raging Robots and Unruly Uncles (1981)
• The Chewing-gum Rescue and Other Stories (1982)
• The Haunting (1982)
• The Pirates' Mixed-Up Voyage (1983)
• The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance (1984)
• Aliens in the Family (1985)
• JAM: A True Story (1985)
• The Catalogue of the Universe (1985)
• The Tricksters (1986)
• The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate (1987) with Margaret Chamberlain
• The Five Sisters (1987) with Patricia MacCarthy
• Memory (1987)
• The Downhill Crocodile Whizz & Other Stories (1988) (collection)
• The Boy Who Bounced and Other Magic Tales (1988) (collection)
• The Door in the Air and Other Stories (1988)
• Leaf Magic and Five Other Stories (1988) with Margaret Chamberlain (collection)
• The Great White Man-Eating Shark: A Cautionary Tale (1989)
• The Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak (1991)
• The Girl With the Green Ear: Stories About Magic in Nature (1992) (collection)
• Dangerous Spaces (1992)
• A Tall Story and Other Tales (1992) (collection)
• The Greatest Show Off Earth (1994)
• The Horribly Haunted School (1998)
• 24 Hours (2000)
• Alchemy (2004)
• Don't Read This! (2004)
• Maddigan's Fantasia (2005)
  • also made into a TV series starring Michael Hurst, Tim Balme, Danielle Cormack
• Kaitangata Twitch (2005)
• The Magician of Hoad (2008)
• Awesome Aotearoa: Margaret Mahy's History of New Zealand (2009) illustrated by Trace Hodgson

See also

• The Margaret Mahy pages from Christchurch City Libraries
• "Introducing Margaret Mahy". Betty Gilderdale. Viking Kestrel 1987. ISBN 0-670-81518-7
• New Zealand literature
• Maddigan's Quest