Margaret Mahy Biography

Margaret Mahy, Author

Occup.	Author
From	New Zealand
Born	March 21, 1936 Whakatane, New Zealand
Died	July 23, 2012 Christchurch, New Zealand
Aged	76 years

Margaret Mahy was a kids's publication author from New Zealand.

She was informed at Auckland University College as well as the New Zealand Library School, and functioned a long period of time as a curator in parallel with the authorship. She first created for "The New Zealand School Journal" from 1961, as well as debuted as a writer in 1969 with "A Lion in the Meadow". Her autobiography "Notes of a bag woman" was published in 2003. In the discussion of her journal "Bookbird" emphasized, to name a few points, that "Many of Mahy's books centre around hard get-togethers and unpleasant combinations of various partnerships within a household" and that "In tale after tale, from picturebook to early visitor to young person novel, Mahy represents narrative as remarkable powerful, as well as in ways that can be hazardous along with empowering".

She got the Carnegie Medal in 1982 for "The Haunting" and also 1984 for "The Change Over". She got H.C. Andersen Medal, the "Little Nobel Prize" in 2006, Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2005, as well as was the owner of the Order of New Zealand as well as an honorary doctorate at the University of Waikato.

She had actually been identified with an inoperable malignant jaw tumour in April 2012 as well as had actually been transferred to a hospice concerning 9 days prior to her fatality.

Our collection contains 29 quotes who is written / told by Margaret.

Margaret Mahy Famous Works:

2009 Bubble Trouble (Children's book)
2003 Alchemy (Novella)
1984 The Changeover (Novel)
1982 The Haunting (Novel)
1969 The Lion in the Meadow (Children's book)

Source / external links:

Wikipedia

29 Famous quotes by Margaret Mahy

"I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child"

Margaret Mahy

"I think I am too interested in my own ideas to copy anyone else's, but I find that other people's imagery, the flow of language in the outside world, games with words, and ideas about relationships are all most important to me"

Margaret Mahy

"Anyone interested in the world generally can't help being interested in young adult culture - in the music, the bands, the books, the fashions, and the way in which the young adult community develops its own language"

Margaret Mahy

"It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can "take over" as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times"

Margaret Mahy

"I've never actually been a fighter myself - fighting tires me out and I'm not an efficient fighter anyway - but I have certainly seen other people have great complicated goes at one another"

Margaret Mahy

"I don't think I prefer writing for one age group above another. I am just as pleased with a story which I feel works well for very small children as I do with a story for young adults"

Margaret Mahy

"I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk"

Margaret Mahy

"At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction"

Margaret Mahy

"At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young"

Margaret Mahy

"My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years"

Margaret Mahy

"Ellis's understanding of himself and the world around him certainly develops because of his adventures, and part of that development comes through recognizing other people for what they are"

Margaret Mahy

"When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books"

Margaret Mahy

"Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them"

Margaret Mahy

"I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original"

Margaret Mahy

"I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation"

Margaret Mahy

"In a way, the characters often do take over"

Margaret Mahy

"They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination, since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people"

Margaret Mahy

"The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book"

Margaret Mahy

"New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications"

Margaret Mahy

"I, personally, have found reading a continual support to writing"

Margaret Mahy

"I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been"

Margaret Mahy

"By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life"

Margaret Mahy

"Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too"

Margaret Mahy

"When I was a child I had a best friend who lived across the road from me. When her mother died unexpectedly it was like losing a member of my own family. I think I am still affected by the memory of that loss"

Margaret Mahy

"There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and "live" with the characters"

Margaret Mahy

"It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books"

Margaret Mahy

"When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared"

Margaret Mahy

"Every writer has to find their own way into writing"

Margaret Mahy

"Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act"

Margaret Mahy