Margaret Mahy gets 'Little Nobel'

Author Margaret Mahy will receive the award this September in Beijing. Picture / Simon Baker

As a librarian, Margaret Mahy would seek out books by authors who had won the Hans Christian Andersen Award because she knew they were the best.

Decades passed and yesterday the beloved writer joined the ranks of those world's greatest children's authors by winning the award, judged on a writer's lasting contribution to the genre, herself.

Mahy, 70, is the first New Zealander to receive the world's premier prize for children's literature, branded the "Little Nobel".

"I hope that I have passed on the pleasure that other writers and their stories have given to me," a proud Mahy told the Herald.

An international panel of judges selected Mahy's body of work ahead of 25 other authors from around the world. The panel described Mahy as "one of the world's most original re-inventors of language".

"Mahy's language is rich in poetic imagery, magic, and supernatural elements. Her oeuvre provides a vast, numinous, but intensely personal metaphorical arena for the expression and experience of childhood and adolescence."

"Equally important, however, are her rhymes and poems for children. Mahy's works are known to children and young adults all over the world."

Mahy admitted the award made her "vanity leap up like a fountain".

"On one hand, there's a very egotistical part of you that rejoices ... and at the same time, the more rational part of you thinks it's great to have this happen to you, but it could just have easily happened to someone else."

"I was a librarian and I used to look for winners of the award. We would actually plan towards them for the library."

Mahy welcomed the attention the award would bring to the "expanding nature of children's books in New Zealand". "Once upon a time I think they were regarded as the sort of books you wrote if you weren't clever enough to write for adults."

She has lost none of her passion for writing with age.

"I find I can't work as hard as I used to. I used to work all night and I find I can't do that any more. I imagine [writing] will go on, possibly with less determination and less precision. I started to make up poems and things at four years old, so I feel I am committed."

Mahy, who likes to leave time for her two daughters and seven grandchildren, is working to get an 800-page fantasy novel she wrote down to about 450 pages for publication.

"And I like to think, as the year goes on, I manage to come up with one or two good picture book texts."

Mahy was nominated for the award by the Storylines Children's Literature Foundation of New Zealand, which represents the New Zealand branch of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) that presents the award every two years.

Storylines chairwoman Rosemary Tisdall said: "This is a huge achievement and the whole of New Zealand, children and adults alike, congratulates its greatest and most beloved writer."

Mahy will travel to Beijing in September to receive a gold medal and citation from IBBY.

A STORYTELLER'S LIFE

Margaret Mahy's career began in 1961 with the publication of her first story in the School Journal. International recognition arrived in 1969, when five of her Journal stories appeared as picture books, and was cemented by an outpouring of picture books and story collections during the 1970s.

In 1980, aged 44 and the mother of two teenage daughters, Mahy left her Christchurch library position to write full-time. Her first novels, The Haunting and The Changeover, won the British Carnegie Medal for 1982 and 1984.

Among her publications are picture books, novels for children and young adults, non-fiction, poetry and plays, and recent publications of essays and speeches for adults.

She has written extensively for television (including Maddigan's Quest) and adapted The Haunting as a feature film. Her children's books have been translated into more than 15 languages and she has regularly appeared at international forums on children's literature since the early 1970s.

Mahy was made an official New Zealand Arts Icon last year. She lives in Governors Bay, near Christchurch, and has two daughters and seven grandchildren.

Extract from The Changeover, Margaret Mahy's first novel for young adults, which won Britain's most prestigious award for a children's or young adults' book in 1984:

Although the label on the hair shampoo said Paris and had a picture of a beautiful girl with the Eiffel Tower behind her bare shoulder, it was forced to tell the truth in tiny print under the picture. Made in New Zealand, it said, Wisdom Laboratories, Paraparaumu.

Just for a moment Laura had had a dream of washing her hair and coming out from under the shower to find she was not only marvellously beautiful but also transported to Paris.

However, there was no point in washing her hair if she were only going to be moved as far as Paraparaumu. Beside, she knew her hair would not dry in time for school, and she would spend half the morning with chilly ears.

These were facts of everyday life, and being made in New Zealand was another.

You couldn't really think your way into being another person with a different morning ahead of you, or shampoo yourself into a beautiful city full of artists drinking wine and eating pancakes cooked in brandy.