Margaret Mahy

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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.

One of her better-known books is The Haunting, which 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 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.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Bibliography

  • A Lion in the Meadow (1972)
  • The Great Piratical Rambustification & The Librarian and the Robbers (1978) with Quentin Blake (collection)
  • Raging Robots and Unruly Uncles (1981)
  • The Pirates' Mixed-Up Voyage (1983)
  • The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance (1984)
  • Aliens in the Family (1985)
  • JAM: A True Story (1985)
  • The Tricksters (1986)
  • The Changeover (1986)
  • The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate (1987) with Margaret Chamberlain
  • The Catalogue of the Universe (1987)
  • 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 Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak (1991)
  • The Girl With the Green Ear: Stories About Magic in Nature (1992) (collection)
  • The Haunting (1992)
  • 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)
  • Maddigans Fantasia (2005)
  • Kaitangata Twitch (2005)

[edit] See also

Persondata
NAME Mahy, Margaret
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Author
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Whakatane, New Zealand
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
In other languages