Margaret Mahy – A Tribute from NZ Early Childhood Community

Margaret Mahy – A Tribute from the Early Childhood Community in NZ

Wellington, July 25, 2012 - A literary hero for kiwi kids, Margaret Mahy, will be sadly missed, early childhood and education news network ChildForum says.

While her sparkling stories leap off the printed page and are enjoyed immensely by children of all ages she will be warmly remembered in other ways too, chief executive of ChildForum Dr Sarah Farquhar says.

“Her genuine connection with children was simply unparalleled and she addressed children as people who had minds and could think for themselves.”

Her stories encouraged children to be curious, to reflect, to ask questions and to question – and most of all to practise imagining and to grow their imagination, Dr Farquhar says.

She had two daughters and parented alone working by day for Christchurch library and taking the library van around the city, and writing at night when her girls were asleep.

In 1969 she had her first children’s picture books published. Gifting a set of her first books to her younger daughter’s daycare centre, the former Avalon Nursery School in Manchester St, she signed them “With love to Avalon from Margaret Mahy”.

One of these first internationally published picture books “A Lion in the Meadow” was written especially for pre-schoolers, and was about a mother and her two young children at home and an imaginary lion. It sold in the UK for 21 shillings at the time.

The dust jacket to the 1969 first edition reads:

“In her native New Zealand, Margaret Mahy finds time to write her delightful stories, despite a full-time job as a librarian. She also takes care of her two small daughters. A Lion in the Meadow introduces her to a world-wide audience.”

The Lion in the Meadow is a timeless story enjoyed and treasured by pre-schoolers, their parents and by early childhood educators. Many other Margaret Mahy books have become highly popular too and are viewed as core shared-reading books for all pre-schoolers and their caregivers including the “Witch in the Cherry Tree”, “The Three-Legged Cat”, and the “Great White Man-Eating Shark”.

Margaret Mahy will continue to live in the minds of this and future generations of children, parents, and early childhood educators through her stories and poems, and her lively and lovely imagination conveyed in these, Dr Farquhar says.

ENDS

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