Magical Margaret Mahy

Description

Margaret Mahy was a wizard of words and a spinner of magical stories. She was New Zealand's best known writer for children and during her lifetime she wrote more than 200 books. She won some of the world's most prestigious writing awards, including the Carnegie medal and the Hans Christian Anderson award, and she often appeared in a purple wig or a penguin suit while she delighted audiences with vivacious readings of her stories. But who was Margaret Mahy? What was she like as a child? How did she become a writer? Where did her weird and wonderful ideas come from? In these pages we meet the woman behind the name on the book covers. Step into the world of he magical Margaret Mahy. First published in 1987, Betty Gilderdale's biography of Margaret Mahy has been fully revised and updated.

Author description

Betty Gilderdale is a scholar, educator, and an expert on New Zealand children's literature. She has worked as a lecturer, and her pioneering study, A Sea Change: 145 Years of New Zealand Junior Fiction (1982), won the PEN Award for best first book of prose. She has written numerous research papers, reviews of children's books, as well as entries in reference publications. Gilderdale's major biography, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, was published in 1996. Betty is also the author of the now classic The Little Yellow Digger, which has remained in print for over twenty years. The Betty Gilderdale Award has been named in her honour.