Margaret Mahy, 1936 – 2012: A Personal Tribute
The passing of the great Children’s and Young Adult author, Margaret Mahy, has garnered significant attention both here and overseas, for example with the tremendous contributions on Beatties Bookblog, here, and tributes in the NZ Herald and The Guardian, here — all as it should, given her stature.
And I, too, albeit in a considerably more modest way, feel it is important to mark her passing and her tremendous contribution to children’s literature.
My first Margaret Mahy as a reader was also one of her first publications: “A Lion In The Meadow.” Subsequent favourites included “The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate” and of course the Junior and YA stories respectively, The Haunting and The Changeover.
More recently I have bought my nephews her picture books A Summery Saturday Morning, Down The Back of the Chair and Bubble Trouble.
The thing that struck me when I read them, just as it does whenever I pick up A Lion in the Meadow and The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate again, was the way in which her stories, although written for a very young audience, can still be enjoyed by adults. I think it’s because there is a timelessness to them, and defintely a joie de vivre, but perhaps most importantly of all, her stories never talk down to the reader.
When I look at her body of work, I can only think what a great taonga (prized treasure) she has left us all, not just New Zealand, but all the reading world.
My Cat Like To Hide In Boxes is the first I remember of hers as a 3 yr old.
& I’ve always wanted a real Hairy Macleary.
RIP Margaret Mahy
Margaret Mahy was undoubtedly an outstanding writer.
Isn’t “My Cat Likes To Hide In Boxes” Lynley Dodd though, the same as Hairy Maclary?
Oh no, you’re right, my confusion.
Apologies to Lynley.
Mahy – it was The Littlest Witch that was the favorite, though so many others were devoured and reread.
No worries, Jan.:)
Many people have commented on Margaret Mahy’s generosity, and I’ve also been privileged to see it in action.
Back in the early 1990s, our drama group thought we’d like to turn a couple of lovely children’s books into little plays for the school holidays. I like to think that it was fairly groundbreaking stuff – before the time of theatre groups regularly doing school holiday seasons.
We chose “Rooms to let” by MM, and she was very ready to give her consent and very encouraging of our idea. It was a charming story to act out and enthusiastically received by our audiences!
That’s a lovely story and tribute to Margaret, Heather: thank you for sharing it.
When I was a primary school (I think I was aged about nine or ten) I had to do a school project where you picked a grown up with a job you’d like to do when you grew up, and asked them all about it. I got it into my head I wanted to be a writer and I loved the Lion in the Meadow as well as her other books, so I looked up Margaret Mahy in the phone book and asked if she would agreed to be interviewed. To my parents’ surprise, Margaret agreed! We made a time, and she met me in the Christchurch library (wearing her rainbow wig) where I solemnly asked my pre prepared questions and carefully wrote down everything she said in response for the poster I shared with my class. To this day, I cannot believe that she agreed to do it, but I gather it was typical of her generous spirit and her readiness to ‘respond’ to her young readers.
Charlotte, this is a fabulous story—I love it, and love it even more because it is true. 🙂