The Man from the 
Land of Fandango

The post Review of The Man from the Land of Fandango appeared first on The Horn Book.

Margaret Mahy. Photo by Ken Silber.

We are saddened to learn about the passing of Margaret Mahy, New Zealand’s Grande Dame of children’s literature. Ms. Mahy’s many awards and accolades include the Hans Christian Andersen Medal (2006); Carnegie Medals for The Haunting (1982) and The Changeover (1984); and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Bubble Trouble (2009), illustrated by Polly Dunbar, and Honor Book Awards for Memory (1988) and The Changeover (1985).

La Mahy was a great friend to The Horn Book, and in 2009 I was thrilled to be able to speak with her at her home. Like the great lady herself, the place was warm, welcoming, and full of life, and our conversation felt like chatting with an old friend. Follow the links below to read some of her Horn Book contributions.

Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Acceptance speech for Bubble Trouble printed in the January/February 2010 Magazine and read by Clarion Books publicist Jennifer Groves at the 2009 awards ceremony.

An Interview with Margaret Mahy. From the November/December 2009 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Five Questions for Margaret Mahy. From the May 2009 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

Accumulated Power from the March/April 1997 special issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Family Reading.

Cat sketch by Margaret Mahy.

And here’s a little picture MM drew for Roger.

The post Margaret Mahy (1936-2012) appeared first on The Horn Book.

When I worked as a librarian for the School Library Service in New Zealand, one of my jobs was reading book reviews and ordering such books as were praised and recommended. The Horn Book was extremely important to me back then, particularly since it featured such thoughtful and reliable reviews, along with articles that tied me into the international world of children’s books, letting me know just what was being published for children in the USA and what experts thought of them. I could feel my awareness stretching as new titles and authors were mentioned, and of course I was always fascinated to find out just which books had won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, not only because the winners were books I wanted to acquire for the library but because, in life beyond work, I was a committed reader, always looking for a story that would thrill me, and there was a strong chance I would find the award-winners thrilling in various ways.

When I heard that Bubble Trouble was an award winner, I was utterly amazed and (of course) delighted. Writers create their stories inside their heads, then send their stories out into the world with the hope — the expectation — that somewhere out there some reader will read and enjoy the story, building it back into his or her own private world — an inner world that is inevitably different from that other inner world that was the source of the story in the first place. So the story, told or published, describes an arc, moving from one imagination to another. The writer launches the story, the illustrator expands it, the publisher gives it an accessible form, and ultimately the reader receives and in some ways re-creates it, for even when the words are firmly in print on the page readers respond differently to them, make their own connections, build their own edifices of image and language. Winning an award means that experienced readers have enjoyed the story, and the story is fulfilled.

The starting point for a story like Bubble Trouble is, of course, language itself. It has something of the quality of a tongue-twister, a traditional game that people have played with words for many years. When I was a child I was certainly fascinated by the sound of words — a fascination I think we all share. Language is so important to us that from infancy on we respond to games with words…games that entice us into using words — not only tongue-twisters, but echoing rhymes. School playgrounds generate their own rhymes and chants, along with small verses that seem to have no author, no identifiable origin…that seem to spring into existence in some strange spontaneous way. I am not suggesting that Bubble Trouble is like this. For one thing, it does tell an elaborate story; and for another, my name is attached to it. I do think, however, that part of its appeal, to me at least, is a relationship with the word games of my childhood.

I would love to be able to receive the award in person, but I have to resign myself to thanking you all with words, written down and then magically projected across an ocean by modern technology. But after all, even if I were lucky enough to be with you, ultimately my thanks would be conveyed in words anyway. It has been such a huge thrill for me to have the story recognized in this way…a recognition that I have never considered possible. So, “Here’s to the Horn Book!” I cry. (Looking a little to my left, I can see copies of The Horn Book in a line of books at the back of my desk.) “Here’s to the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award!” I have already said “Thank you!” but there is nothing wrong, in a case like this, with saying it again. Thank you so much! Thank you so very much!

From the January/February 2010 Horn Book Magazine.

The post Boston Globe – Horn Book Acceptance: Bubble Trouble appeared first on The Horn Book.

Acclaimed author Margaret Mahy has won accolades for her novels, including Carnegie Medals for both The Haunting and The Changeover. Her picture books The Great White Man-Eating Shark and The Three- Legged Cat have become classics, and Bubble Trouble, illustrated by Polly Dunbar, was recently named the winner of a 2009 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. Horn Book Guide Managing Editor Elissa Gershowitz visited Mahy at her home on New Zealand’s South Island late last year.

ELISSA GERSHOWITZ: I’m here with Margaret Mahy in her lovely home in Governors Bay, New Zealand. Margaret, perhaps you could describe our setting?

MARGARET MAHY: Well, my home’s in Lyttelton Harbour, which was once a volcano. But the sea broke in, and it’s hopefully an extinct volcano now. It turned into a harbor instead. From here I can look all the way down to the mouth of the harbor. At this time of the year the sun’s shifting a lot because our day is getting longer. Two weeks ago, the sun was getting up behind the hinterland. Now it’s coming out on the water, possibly already coming up behind the other hinterland. So you’ve got a good sense of the seasons and the time of day.

I’ve lived here for about forty years. Originally I had this one small section of house. Then, as I could afford to, I added on to it in bits and pieces. I’d dig out through clay and dirt and everything, pour a slab foundation, and then have a couple of rooms built. So it’s a house that’s grown up slowly. And as well as having a good slab foundation, it’s also weighed down with books!

EG: There are books everywhere . . .

MM: Even if there was a cyclone, I think my house would be weighed down by literature!

There’s a cottage next door, which I now own as well. My old aunt used to live there. I looked after her when she was really old and she’d lost her memory. I wrote a novel called Memory in which there was a character a bit like my aunt—very like her, in a lot of ways, because many of the events in that book are actually accounts of my life with my aunt. Although it is fiction; it’s invented. But I remember — oh, she would wake up at four in the morning and decide to go to the shops!

And there’s a bit of a garden, a lovely jungly garden here, and I share the house with a dog and two cats.

EG: Friendly animals.

MM: They’re friendly, and they can be a great nuisance! The dog and one cat get on very well together, and like to share a chair, but the black cat hates them both!

EG: And your office is in your bedroom?

MM: Yes, so I spend a lot of time living in that room: I sleep there and I work there, and I often eat there. When I’m here on my own I only need one room — of course, it’s nice to have more!

EG: Is there a time of day that you enjoy working most?

MM: I get up pretty early in the morning, and I work in the morning — but it depends what I’m working on. Sometimes I can go all day. These days I do everything on the computer. I used to write on every second line of an exercise book, then do corrections and alterations in a different color on the in-between lines and put things down in the margins. And then I’d type it out and go through it and cut and paste, and cut and paste . . .

EG: Literally cut and paste, with scissors?

MM: Yes! I tend to make things too long. When you’re actually writing a book, you don’t always notice the things that are wrong with it. You need to put it aside for a little while, and then you try to take it by surprise. And then you suddenly think, Gosh, I’ve put in too much description, or, I’ve made this too long. The shortest book I’ve ever written was about nine words long, part of a reading series here in New Zealand. The longest book I’ve ever written was originally eight hundred pages. It’s a fantasy called The Magician of Hoad. It’s set in an invented country, but I did a lot of reading about pre-Renaissance European civilizations. And somehow when you read things, there’s a tendency to want to make use of them, so I had a great deal more detail than I needed. I didn’t want to waste my research! But I let a little time go by and read it again and realized that I’d made it too long. I think the finished book is about three hundred pages, so it’s still quite a good length.

EG: Are you your own first editor?

MM: Yes, I am. One of the things I do is to read it aloud to myself so that I get some idea of how it sounds. This enables you to pick up sentences that are too long and rambling. Or maybe you’ve got a series of short sentences where it isn’t quite appropriate, so there’s a sense of false urgency to the story in places. I am my own first editor, but of course, I’m prejudiced in my own favor! Sooner or later, you need an editor who’s a reader. A good editor is your first reader, as it were. Depends on the story, though, because some of the very simple ones I read to my grandchildren, but the novels—I usually don’t read those to anybody except myself, and then I send them away.

EG: What’s the process like, with your editor being far away?

MM: Well, I’ve gotten some unexpected reactions. Certain stories that I’ve written, for young adults in particular, are set in New Zealand. I once had an editor who really didn’t like the New Zealand idiom I used and said that children in the USA would be confused by slang they didn’t understand. And I said defiantly that children in New Zealand have long had to cope with idioms from the USA and the UK. It seemed to me unfair that the editors wanted to cut that out.

But mostly they’re very good readers. I was lucky to have had Margaret McElderry for many years — a wonderful editor. At present, I have an agent in the UK. So I write the book and edit it myself, and then it goes to the agent, who does a bit of editing, and then it goes to a true editor at a publishing company, and they will come back to me often with very useful suggestions. But there’s always something that we don’t agree on!

EG: Can you talk a little bit about how you first broke into the US market?

MM: I started writing stories when I was seven years old and went on and on, using bigger and bigger exercise books. I wanted to be a writer, and people often tended to have a scornful reaction to that. They’d say, “You can’t make a living as a writer!” And they’re right in a way, but they’re not totally right. I sent poems and stories to local publishers, but they were often turned down, because at that point in New Zealand — and still to a considerable extent— the stories that publishers were concentrating on were stories with a New Zealand background. My stories weren’t that sort of story, and publishers tended to think that the sort of stories I was writing would be competing with what was coming in from Britain and the USA.

Anyway, I used to get quite a lot of my work published in a New Zealand magazine called The School Journal. There happened to be a printing exhibition over in New York, and New Zealand sent some examples of fine printing, including The School Journal. A woman called Helen Hoke Watts — the wife of the man who ran the publishing company Franklin Watts — saw a copy and read one of my stories, “A Lion in the Meadow,” which she thought would make a good picture book.

So Helen Hoke Watts came out to New Zealand to see me, and I’ll never forget our meeting. Her first words to me were, “This really is the end of the world— they don’t recognize American Express!” [laughing] I certainly felt apologetic for that. And at that point my house wasn’t properly finished. It was quite a change for her because she had just come from the Savoy Hotel in London! She went through my files and boxes, and she took copies of the stories she wanted.They started off by publishing five picture books and went on to do some books of short stories.

In a way I think the stories were more English than New Zealand. I received some criticism for that here. But I had undergone a sort of imaginative displacement because even though I was born in New Zealand, I’d been brought up on English books, lots and lots of English books, and very few New Zealand ones. There weren’t very many then.

I do feel that I’m essentially a New Zealander. I’ve always been interested in the fact that I found it hard in the beginning to write about New Zealand. But the time came when I found I could write a story set in New Zealand without feeling too self-conscious or too deliberate. The setting just seemed to become a natural part of the story. And that book was The Changeover.

EG: You write in so many different styles and genres. Do you write all of your stories in different genres at the same time, or do you write one picture book, then one fantasy novel, and so on?

MM: I’ve sometimes done several things at the same time. One disconcerting thing that’s happened to me is that I’ve gotten older! I don’t find it possible to stay awake all night and work in quite the way that I used to. I’ve been working on a history of New Zealand, which was suggested to me by an editor for the Auckland University Press. After that I plan to work on a series of short stories for a while and try to produce some new picture book texts. I haven’t got an idea for a novel yet, but there’s no end to story. The world suggests stories as you go along. You see things happen or you hear something said, and sometimes these things extend themselves into stories. It’s partly because of being a reader, I think. Reading is very creative—it’s not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it.

EG: What’s so remarkable about so many of your books is that the characters seem like normal people going about their lives, and their conversations are regular family conversations where they talk over one another—and then something strange happens.

MM: Yes, I’ve written quite a lot of stories like that — from one of the first picture books that Helen Watts published to The Changeover to a book called The Dragon of an Ordinary Family. They were an ordinary family, but they had a dragon for a pet. They didn’t entirely know what to do about it!

EG: You’ve also written novels that could be categorized as ghost stories (The Haunting, The Tricksters). Have you ever seen a ghost?

MM: Strictly speaking, I haven’t. I’ve been haunted, but that’s a bit different. [laughing] You can be haunted by your own memories, or a particular place may be haunting, but no, I haven’t seen a ghost. I suppose I think that when you break matter down to its atomic level and the quantum level, it is rather ghostly. It’s simultaneously a wave and a particle, and how that contradiction can exist is a puzzle to me. Somebody told me that if I understood the math that I’d get it, but it seems to me that we’re a million miles away from understanding the math. The idea of something simultaneously being a wave and a particle is mysterious. I think ultimately it’s a very mysterious world.

From The Changeover
“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. Besides, 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.”

Best of Margaret Mahy
FICTION
The Haunting (Atheneum, 1983)
The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance (McElderry, 1984)
The Catalogue of the Universe (McElderry, 1986)
The Tricksters (McElderry, 1987)
Memory (McElderry, 1988)
The Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak; illus. by Wendy Smith (McElderry, 1989)
24 Hours (McElderry, 2000)

PICTURE BOOKS
17 Kings and 42 Elephants; illus. by Patricia MacCarthy (Dial, 1987)
The Great White Man-Eating Shark: A Cautionary Tale; illus. by Jonathan Allen (Dial, 1990)
The Three-Legged Cat; illus. by Jonathan Allen (Viking, 1992)
Down the Back of the Chair; illus. by Polly Dunbar (Clarion, 2006)
Bubble Trouble; illus. by Polly Dunbar (Clarion, 2009)

 From the November/December 2009 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

The post An Interview with Margaret Mahy appeared first on The Horn Book.

1. How did you come to write this tongue-twister thriller?

It is sometimes hard to say exactly where the idea for a story comes from, but in this case it was almost certainly the mere sound of the words. And having coupled bubble with trouble, one had to think of the sort of mischief that might be caused by a rebellious bubble.

2. The line that defeats me every time is “how wicked treble Abel tripled trouble with his pebble.” What’s the hardest tongue twister you know?

The hardest one I know is probably “The Leith Police dismisseth us!” but it isn’t a particularly flamboyant tongue twister, is it? Just hard to say quickly . . .

3. Did you get in hot water a lot as a child? Have you ever used a slingshot?

I got into trouble at school and sometimes at home for talking a lot; I was a very chatty child. I longed to use a slingshot but was discouraged from doing so. Nevertheless, the time came when I learned how to make slingshots of my own, and then I was probably a bit of a risk to those around me.

4. You write both laugh-out-loud picture books and deeply cosmic novels. What do you think they have in common?

Language, of course, is one of the things they have in common — even if the language varies according to the story that is being told. Also, I think mystery underlies humor in a way that is not commonly acknowledged. Sometimes a joke with words can direct one’s perception into unexpected fields . . . fields that have to do with the mystery of the human condition.

5. As a parent, grandparent, and librarian, what do you look for in a book to read aloud?

Ideally, I look for a story I will enjoy myself. My theory is that the listening child will see that I am enjoying the story, and this will blend into the child’s own pleasure. Reading the story and hearing it become a shared and sometimes intimate experience . . . something that emphasizes the richness of words and event.

From the May 2009 Notes from the Horn Book.

The post Five questions for Margaret Mahy appeared first on The Horn Book.

When I was a child, books published in the U.S. were difficult to come by in New Zealand, dominated as it was by its trading relationship with Britain. But by the time I came to read to my daughters, the publishing world had changed. I was able to read them Blueberries for Sal as well as Peter Rabbit. Of course new ones kept on creeping in. My oldest daughter loved Kiki Goes to Camp by Charlotte Steiner at a time when I was most enthusiastic about The Boy and the Magic by Colette.

When I pull one of my own childhood favorites from the shelf, I wonder, will I still enjoy it? Has time brought me and this book to a point from which we just go in different directions? This does happen. I occasionally read The Story of Ferdinand to my grandchildren, but without the pleasure in the story I originally felt. (To hell with Hemingway! I no longer believe in the enthusiasm Ferdinand’s brothers show for the bull ring, which I now see as a place of atrocity.) The words on the page stand still. The world and the reader change around them.

Now, reading to grandchildren, I read newer authors. Eric Carle, Quentin Blake, Harve and Margot Zemach, Maurice Sendak. I read stories by New Zealanders whose stories make the immediate environment of the listening children replete with imaginative possibility. I also read them The Stinky Cheese Man, Jumanji, and Julius, the Baby of the World from signed copies acquired at ALA conferences.

But sometimes as I read familiar tales to my grandchildren, I weep. One such book, Honey Bear by Dixie Willson, was given to me by an aunt in 1939. It is a sweet, rather sentimental story, though mysterious and humorous, too. I read Honey Bear to my grandchildren and cry as I read, not because of its sentiment but because of its accumulated power. By now there is more to the story than words, pages, and pictures. The voices of my dead parents come to me out of the story, setting up profound sympathetic resonance in that echoing inner library, both voices mingling with mine as I read, yet again, this little-known book.

It was mysterious then, and it is still mysterious today, and the children I read it to watch my face as I read and stare at my tears — those outer signs of the power of the story working in an individual consciousness — with wonder.

From the March/April 1997 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: Family Reading.

The post “Accumulated Power” appeared first on The Horn Book.