Margaret Mahy was 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. There have 100 children's books, 40 novels, and 20 collections of her stories published. 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 was 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 died on 23 July 2012. On 29 April 2013, New Zealand’s top honour for children’s books was renamed the New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award.For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret...
She was awarded the Order of Merit of New Zealand for her services to literature and New Zealand.
Mahy lived at Governors Bay on the Banks Peninsula, Canterbury, in the South Island of New Zealand. She had been a solo mother and raised two daughters there.
She often visited schools and libraries, sometimes in costume.
In 1980, she became a full-time writer. She won numerous awards and honors for her contributions to childrens literature, including the Carnegie Medal and the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award. She was the first writer from outside Britain to be awarded the Carnegie Medal.
She studied at Auckland University College from 1952 to 1954 and Canterbury University College, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1955. A solo mother of two, she attended the New Zealand Library School so she could work as a librarian during the day and write her stories at night.
When she was 62, she got a tattoo. She had it etched on her right shoulder: a tattoo of a skull with a rose in its teeth.
Mahy, a big believer in reading aloud to children, made many appearances at local schools to read from her books, often dressed in an elaborate feathered outfit and multicolored wig.
Won the New Zealand Post Childrens book of the Year in 2011 for The Moon and Farmer McPhee.
Won the Phoenix Award in 2007 for Memory.
Won the Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2006 for services to New Zealand science fiction and fantasy.
Won Phoenix Award in 2005 for The Catalogue of the Universe.
Won for best young adult novel in the New Zealand Post childrens book awards in 2003 for Alchemy.
Mahy was the first person outside of Britain to win the Carnegie Medal in 1982, for her book The Haunting. In 1984 she won the medal again for The Changeover.
In 2006, Margaret Mahy won the prestigious biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing, in recognition of her lifetime contribution to childrens literature.
She worked as a librarian in Petone, the School Library Service in Christchurch, and in 1976 was appointed Childrens Librarian at Canterbury Public Library.
Mahy completed her undergraduate BA at Auckland University College (1952-1954) and Canterbury University College, graduating in 1955. In 1956 she trained at the New Zealand Library School, Wellington as a librarian.
She wrote her first published story when she was 7, called "Harry Is Bad".
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.
Mahy won the annual Carnegie Medal in Literature from the Library Association, recognizing the years best childrens book by a British subject, both for The Haunting and for The Changeover.
She got a tattoo at 62 years old on her right shoulder of a skull with a rose in its teeth.
She was the first author from outside Britain to win the Carnegie Medal for Childrens Literature in 1982 for "The Haunting" and again in 1984 for "The Changeover." She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006.
She was the oldest of six children. Daughter of Frances George Mahy, a construction engineer, and May Mahy, a school teacher.
She never married but is survived by two daughters, Bridget and Penelope; a granddaughter; and a cousin, Ron Mahy.
Because reading widely as I did, I rapidly came to feel that everything,worthwhile had already been written.
It changes you for ever, but you are changing for ever anyway.
If people fainted from too much thinking I’d scarcely ever be conscious,” Tabitha began at once. “I think and think all the time, and I’ve never fainted – not once. ” She looked over at Barney enviously. “Why do the best things always happen to other people and not to a promising writer?,It’s so dark - as if all the lights are just there to make the other places seem darker.
Somewhere int he flesh of the earth the dreadful earthquake shuddered, the tide walked to and fro on the leash of the moon, rainbows formed, winds swept the sky like giant brooms piling up clouds before them, clouds which writhed into different shapes, melted into rain or darkened, bruised themselves against an unseen antagonist and went on their way, laced with forking rivers of lightning, complete with white electric tributaries. Out of this infinite vision an infinity of details could be drawn, but Sonny had settled on one, and from the endless series a particular beach was chosen and began to form around Laura - a beach of iron-dark sand and shells like frail stars, and a wonderful wide sea that stretched, neither green nor blue, but inked by the approach of night into violet and black, wrinkling with its own salty puzzles, right out to a distant, pure horizon.
Something is going to happen, Laura thought. She was going to be kissed. On one side of a kiss was childhood, sunshine,innocence, toys and, on the other, people embracing, darkness, passion and the admittance of a person who, no matter how loved, must always have a quality of otherness, not only to her confidence, but somehow inside her sealing skin.
Your Barney?” Cole’s eyebrows shot up. “Yours?”“He’s mine all right!” Claire replied. “Everyone in this family belongs to everyone else – belongs with everyone else, rather. I’ve looked after him for a year now – ironed his shirts, made his school lunches, told him stories. I made that dressing gown he’s wearing, whereas no one knew you were alive this time last week. But what matters most is that he wants to be ours and he doesn’t want to be yours. That’s what counts.
