Margaret Mahy, the author of The Haunting, The Changeover, and many other children’s and young adult books containing supernatural/paranormal themes, passed away on July 23rd at the age of 76 after a short illness. The children’s author was an inspiration to a generation of writers and readers.
Margaret Mahy was born in Whakatane, New Zealand and was inspired to write at a very young age by the adventure stories her father would tell her as a child. Throughout her life, Mahy believed that age did not have to be a barrier to creating stories. She will be missed.
[News via The New Zealand Herald]
She will be missed indeed. Catalogue of the Universe was the first YA I ever read, quickly followed by any of her books this USian could find. So sad that all my childhood heros are passing on.
Oh, I adored The Changeover when I was young. And I read it again a couple years ago and was surprised at how well it had held up. She was one of my first and favorites of the YA paranormal authors. My condolences to her family, and I hope they know how many people’s lives she touched.
Sad news indeed. I have fond memories of her coming by my primary school many years ago and reading The Witch in the Cherry Tree to us.
I wish she had been better known. Her young adult books were wonderful and her picture books likewise but she really shone in her short stories. The Downhill Crocodile Whizz was a favourite of my kids (and me), The Chewing-Gum Rescue was delightful and The Door in the Air was truly fabulous. Since reading it I have had a sadly unfulfilled ambition to bake a cake that is a work of art with ‘cherries and angelica glow[ing] like rubies and emeralds among the dark, rich crumbs’. I’d like to ‘interpret the quality of cakeness and test [my] creation against traditional concepts’.
I had always meant to write and tell her how much she meant to me and to my children who grew up with General Confusion, a military man, Captain Rectitude, Miss Dignity and her sister Miss Edwina Dignity. There are pirates, dragons, crocodiles, orphans, giants and wonderfully adventurous older women including Miss Celia Slipstitch, who had been a freedom fighter in the Anguish Hills…and had been named Freedom Fighter of the Year in 1925. Too late. Far too late. With Diana Wynne Jones and now Margaret Mahy gone I’d better put pen to paper to Ursula LeGuin and Dorothy Rowe.