Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”
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Ok, for someone like me who was too old to have grown up with Margaret Mahy picture books as a child (apart from Lion in the Meadow!), and who bypassed MM's YA novels because trashy novels about bitchy ladies in Manhattan were more appealing, what's a good place to start on a MM rediscovery? I will read anything!
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Lilith __, in reply to
the luckiest geeky astronomer of all got to have his Angela, as well :-)
Jolisa, what a wonderfully sad, merry post. And Richard, adding his coup de grâce punchline.
Not a dry eye in the house.
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Can I just say that this piece by Jolisa is a beautiful piece of writing in it's own right and I am richer for having read it.
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
Robyn - a couple of personal favourites to recommend:
Kaitangata Twitch
Awesome Aotearoa - a collaboration between MM and Trace Hodgson resulting in a very funny and inspired NZ history for young readers. With the added recommendation that it offended Radio Rhema. Heh. -
Wonderful writing, Jolissa. Catalogue is my favourite, too. (I think- not sure I want to chose one :))
It's funny how people being nasty just makes one angry- while people being kind makes one cry. Me anyway.
That and books. One of their pleasures, which only sounds odd to people who don't read, is tearing up a bit.
For some reason Russell Hoban's 'The Twenty Elephant Restaurant' (and some of his other books) used to get me a lot. Marg loved Hoban's writing. She was a remarkably prolific writer, for sure. And the hardest working person I have ever met. But she was also always very aware and proud of being a wide and voracious and active reader. "What are you reading?" she'd ask us- and random strangers, anyone reading in public- and then want to talk about it. -
JLM, in reply to
Thank you so much Jolisa. I love how everyone has different treasures to remember. I think this might be the Elizabeth Knox link you meant. The other one went to Carl Stead's blog, and he hasn't mentioned MM yet.
http://www.elizabethknox.com/archives/2012/07/24/margaret-mahy-hero/
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JLM, in reply to
For some reason Russell Hoban’s ‘The Twenty Elephant Restaurant’ (and some of his other books) used to get me a lot. Marg loved Hoban’s writing.
Very pleased to hear that, Rob. Deborah's tribute highlights "the way she wrote about good and effective parenting" and that immediately made me think of the Frances books, which have a special place in our family.
Sincere condolences to all your family
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Jolisa, in reply to
You're right - thanks for spotting that!! Too many tabs open on my browser. I'll see if I can get the webmaster to fix the earlier link.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Done.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
That one sounds a bit like an entry on the geological timescale.
Perfectly appropriate as an adjective then.
Mahyem certainly gets my vote for the name of the universe Margaret Mahy created.
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Lilith __, in reply to
Mahyem certainly gets my vote for the name of the universe Margaret Mahy created.
Also -- here in quake-addled Chch -- I can't help thinking we could measure books on a scale of Mahytude. ;-)
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Oh big sis, you big meany! How do you do it?
<Heads for the loo for a great piratical rumbustification of a howl>
...I may be some time.
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Jolisa, in reply to
The Tricksters is pretty hot -- my top-equal favourite with The Catalogue of the Universe. And - it's okay not to be blown away by them all equally. The recipe and the ingredients, while similar, differ from book to book, and you'll find some that please you more than others. Some are more uncanny, some more realist, some quite whimsical, others very dark. Have a play!
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Jolisa, in reply to
“What are you reading?” she’d ask us- and random strangers, anyone reading in public- and then want to talk about it.
The funny thing about that question is that it so often shuts people up. (I usually go completely blank, myself). Except when you're talking about kids' books, I find.
One of their pleasures, which only sounds odd to people who don’t read, is tearing up a bit.
There is something voluptuous about a good cry. The books that made me go "waaah" were the ones I most often re-read, as a child. Not for melancholy, but because - oh, to be able to just feel! And to try to figure out how the trick was accomplished.
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Jolisa, in reply to
<Heads for the loo for a great piratical rumbustification of a howl>
<Bangs on the door> Hurry up!
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martinb, in reply to
think the book the Catalogue of the Universe features in the story- the guy who isn't the fullback or fast bowler stands on it to get the girl...from memory I think she tells him to stand on it...
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Glad this is still going here. Was so sad to see the 24 hour news cycle has rolled on past this great New Zealander.
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fixing Martin's link
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The Lion, the Witch and the Pirate...
well wrought Jolisa...Margaret Mahy - So long and thanks for all the pirates, and for sowing the seeds of wonder!
all kids after reading her
navigate to the Mahy Pole
to dance through life...“I can’t think of one other kid I know who’d wake up at two a.m. and find her mother scything the grass.”
I can’t think of one other writer I know who’d put that scene in a book set in New Zealand.I can see R.H. Morrieson getting away with it... sadly, unlike Margaret Mahy's well deserved acclaim, he was (as he prophesised) "...another one of these poor buggers who get discovered when they’re dead?"
and something for the Dewey-(Decimal)-eyed among you... retro library posters
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I'd been largely avoiding reading anything for fear of acknowledging the fact making it all become real but then my kids' school (where I am a teacher aide) spent today crafting notes and stories and poems which will adorn Margaret Mahy's coffin and it's all a bit too much.
Margaret and my mother were childrens librarians at the same time (though in different cities) and she was an enormous influence on my Mum and thereby me as well. Somewhere I have signed copies of several of her books - always with a little doodle of a lion or a crocodile.
I think my favourite of her picture books is The Witch in the Cherry Tree. The mother being delightfully vague and half engaged with her son's ideas, the witch yearning for the cosy domesticity inside the house and the little boy, David, who is cannier than either of them.
The teen books came out at just the right time for me. All those "ordinary" girls who were anything but left me with powerful feelings which never quite subsided but I think it was the adults who left the biggest impression - parents who were fully rounded characters with flaws and fears and dreams of their own.
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Islander, in reply to
<q> always with a little doodle of a lion or a crocodile.
O! I just went upstairs and gathered an armload of Margaret’s works -and found, tucked above them, a drawing-
it was originally up on the corkboard behind the desk in the cupboard – laughingly called “The Writer-in-Resident Office” at Canterbury University.
It was *the* lion in the meadow, with a simple “Welcome to the next Writer-in-Residence!” (which was me) in Margaret’s own hand. V. typical of her kind & deep thoughtfulness-
Right. Instead of snivelling, on to rereading the stories-
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When I left New Zealand to do postgrad in Germany, The Changeover was one of the two English-language books I took; all these years and several quakes later, it is still recognisably a story of magic unrolling in my city, at a place where the Ferrymead hills bend a little.
Brilliant tribute. Thank you, Jolisa.
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Can we get rid of that spam person?
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Emma Hart, in reply to
Done.
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Beautiful tribute.
And yes, the oddities and diversity and mixture of characters in her writing always felt welcoming. Even with the uneasiness of the plots.
The Changeover is still my favourite - bought the original edition last year (yay Abebooks). I also like Maddigan's Fantasia, book and show (and many others, of course).
On another note, libraries were lifesavers to me growing up, and she has been so thoroughly associated with them. I'll be thinking of her when I do my next book run.
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