Margaret Mahy

by Tessa Duder

  ‘For a longer book I usually have a third and even a fourth draft. I find it good to get all the different versions together and to cut them up and put them together in an even better order with sellotape. Then I get them typed (or type them myself) for the last time and send them to the publisher.’

  As well as the requests for writing tips, there were the children’s letters and the long queues for autographs now standard at every public appearance. From the early 1970s, conference or school visit organisers knew that no matter how long the queue or how tired the author or how pressing the next engagement, every child waiting for an autograph would probably get, along with the distinctive signature, a little drawing of a crocodile, a dragon or a dog as well as a cheerful, interested comment.

  There might be at least one letter a day: ‘I mean to answer the letters I get, but I feel I should do them properly, so I wait. Look at this one. Fifty-seven closely typed pages by a 10-year-old girl. Very sophisticated …’ She has admitted to often being late with her responses. ‘Even with a word processor, it takes a long time, and sometimes, where a school project is concerned, there are many questions. In all the years I have been answering letters one boy has replied, not only saying thank you, but enclosing a petrol voucher. I was very touched.’

  And what, she asked one interviewer, ‘do you make of this one I got from a little girl the other day?’ The letter begins in a hearty, complimentary fashion. She enjoyed a particular Margaret Mahy story very much in fact, “I enjoyed it so much I nearly went to sleep.” Margaret Mahy looks perturbed. ‘Is she finding a secret away of telling me the truth, do you think?’

  By the middle of the 1980s, Margaret’s output had reached new levels made possible only by regular 10- to 18-hour days.

  ‘I almost never turned down work,’ she told Murray Edmond in one of the first ‘literary’ interviews published in Landfall in 1987, ‘until recently when I’ve had a bit much. I am a professional in the sense I chase after opportunities. I’ve almost never turned down any invitation to talk to a group or to visit a school. It’s not just for reasons of making a career, but it’s also for supporting what you’re dealing with — the idea of reading, of books, of story, to exemplify it as a way of making a living. If children ask me how much I make I answer pretty honestly. And they’re often very impressed. I don’t know if land agents would say how much money they make — people are often very shy about money. I do work long hours … Sleep? I have more in the last couple of years. But I’m almost never in bed before midnight. In my case the best work is often done in the early morning — I tend to push the cutting edge of the story along at night when what matters is movement forward rather than precision of judgement. To charge forward and then retrace my steps the next morning and look at where I’ve been has developed into a fairly natural pattern for me. I also show children the number of rewritings of things that I do, partly because process writing in schools involves them in doing some of the same things.’

  Although her range had now expanded into novels for both children and young adults, and into film, television and theatre, her overflowing, inexhaustible storehouse of ideas and sheer enjoyment in writing very short stories found another outlet in the books for children learning to read, published first by the Department of Education (Ready to Read series), followed by Shortland Publications (Storybox and Jellybeans) and Wendy Pye Ltd (Sunshine Books), among others.

  From the early 1980s these reading programmes, comprising small child-sized books and larger, teachers’ versions for classroom use, began to earn New Zealand a formidable reputation overseas, challenging the huge corporate publishers producing expensive hardback textbooks based on phonics. Even today these ‘readers’ account for the majority of New Zealand’s book exports.

  Key authors for the larger educational publishers were Joy Cowley and Margaret Mahy who, according to Sunshine’s Brian Cutting, kept faint-hearted British editors on their toes by introducing words such as ‘sinuous’, as in ‘While a sinuous shark of the good-hearted sort/Shared egg-and-cress sandwiches auntie had brought’.

  As with her picture books, some of Margaret’s school readers had appeared originally in the School Journals, but in the new format they (and new stories) could be presented over and over to children learning to read. Typically, ‘despite a terrible temptation to save one’s best ideas for the more prestigious trade book area’, Margaret has kept some of her finest stories for these programmes. The 1984 Sunshine book, The Girl Who Washed in Moonlight, an exquisite, haunting tale of good and evil, light and darkness, is a good example.

  ‘There are books I have written for educational publication which I like as well as anything I have published in the trade book area, though in a curious way books in a reading scheme are still books that are widely used but publicly hidden. But a true whole book practitioner will have not only various reading series in the classroom, but many trade books too … the Whole Book method of teaching reading has resulted in a large number of short books being published within New Zealand, an increased possibility for authors and illustrators to make a living … as a greatly increased chance for children generally, not just children in homes with a bookish tradition, to make contact with stories that reflect and confirm their own environment.’

  She was not initially attracted to the idea of writing for these programmes.

  ‘When I was first approached I thought it just possible that educational publishing might not be compatible with self-respect, largely because I was remembering the books that were used in the schools of my childhood and the childhoods of my brothers and sisters. I learned to read from the Whitcombe and Tombs Progressive Primers … I remember these with a great deal of affection, for they did tell real stories, though these stories were universally selected from British anthologies and, being made up of folk and fairy tales, had an attractive otherworldly feel to them. Still, people of my generation do remember these stories quite vividly and will recite the good lines they remember to one another. For example, the repeated cry of a character called Teenchy Duck — Quack! Quack! Quack! When will I get my money back! It is a curiously modern entrepreneurial cry, and one I mutter of myself from time to time as I go up to the mail box … [yet] in all my conversations with people on the subject of reading series over the years, I have only encountered one person who recalled [the later Janet and John books] with affection and pleasure …

  ‘It was the memory of such stories, stilted by their didactic intentions, which made me hesitate when asked to write for the Ready to Read series. Along with the passion to make a living went the wish to be passionate about what I wrote, and I had the feeling that I would not be interested in writing the sort of story that children could learn to read from. I was not a teacher. I had no idea about how one introduced new words, or how many or how often and no idea about the sort of basic vocabulary appropriate to each level, and I wanted to have a good time as a writer.

  ‘However, when I expressed my doubts I was told that I should not worry about details such as these. That was the job of the editors and the reading advisers who would assess the stories I came up with. I should write stories as they came to me and make them simple — yes — but as good as possible in literary terms, without restricting myself by anything other than common sense. Occasionally, a good long word, or a lively phrase, I was told, constituted such drama that its strangeness would be compensated for by the interest of the reader. Although, as I have confessed, I enjoyed many of the stories that I learned to read from, my enjoyment of the stories had not, as far as I know, been part of official intention. It seemed to me that the underlying expectations where reading acquisition was concerned had changed in some very basic ways since I was as child. I proceeded rather doubtfully to submit stories that seemed to meet the criteria suggested to me, and to my surprise and pleasure they were accepted for use and I was paid for them. It was a powerful incentive. Writing for the Storybox series I found I could send stories off one week and be paid the nex
t. It set off a sort of pavlovian conditioned reflex which has never left me.’

  ‘We need to remember,’ she said on another occasion, ‘that for some children … these were the only books with which they made any extended contact, and this is true for some children into the present day. Moreover, they had traditionally never been counted as part of literature in New Zealand, even though from early in the 20th century they sold in hundreds of thousands.

  ‘So I begin my stories usually starting from a gleam, some fleeting moment, an unexpected juxtaposition, a typing mistake (“They went out into the sinlight” or “He was like a shop-wrecked sailor”). I tell the story to myself and then begin the process of externalisation, and the consideration of for whom (after myself) the story is intended. Editors are obliged to protect children from taking ill-regulated lives as models, particularly the authors of educational material. Spending public money, they are publicly accountable, and they have to cater for and to gratify a wide proportion of tastes and philosophies. In addition to that they are trying to produce literature by committee, for it is a deep-seated part of the philosophy of teaching reading in New Zealand that children will learn best from a genuine, though very simple, literature rather than graded readers. This underlies all the schemes I work for …’

  To see what can be done with just 16 words and a good illustrator, imagine a five- or six-year-old encountering this little gem, from the author who ‘never ever doubted that she was adored’:

  There was once a wonderful baby. The cat thought she was wonderful. The fish thought she was wonderful. The bird thought she was wonderful and her mother and father thought she was wonderful. And the baby knew she was wonderful.

  Or, for the emerging reader, The Cake, a Shortland’s Jellybean reader that elevated cake-making into an existential discussion on identity crisis.

  The Cake

  Mary’s mother put some sugar into a bowl.

  ‘What’s happening?’ thought the sugar. ‘A moment ago I was sitting around with the rest of the sugar in the sugar-pot. Now I have been chosen for something. I must be special and this must be a special day.’

  Then Mary’s mother put some butter in with the sugar.

  ‘Hello!’ cried the sugar. ‘I can tell we’re going to be friends.’

  ‘How sweet of you,’ the butter said admiringly.

  Mary’s mother turned on the electric mixer.

  Whirrrrr! went the mixer.

  ‘Listen!’ cried the butter, ‘they’re playing our tune.’

  ‘Shall we dance?’ asked the sugar.

  The butter and the sugar danced together until they were so mixed up you couldn’t tell where the butter left off and the sugar began.

  Mary’s mother beat up some eggs and put them into the bowl.

  ‘The more the merrier!’ cried the butter and the sugar. ‘Another friend to dance with. Let’s crack a few yolks.’

  The butter and the eggs and the sugar danced together.

  Down came a soft rain.

  ‘Hello everyone! Here I am!’ said the flour.

  ‘I’m here too!’ cried a funny little voice. It was the baking powder.

  The mixer sang its whirring song and everyone danced together.

  ‘Why are we here?’ the butter asked the flour.

  ‘Who invited us?’ asked the baking powder.

  ‘Something very exciting is going to happen and we have been specially chosen,’ said the flour.

  Down came the currants, the raisins and the cherries.

  ‘Don’t forget us,’ they cried.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ asked a cheery cherry.

  ‘There must be a reason,’ declared a raisin.

  Whiizzz! went the electric mixer. Then they were all turned upside down.

  ‘Let me help you out?’ offered the kindly wooden spoon.

  ‘Let me take you in,’ cried the round baking tin.

  ‘I’ll give you a warm welcome,’ said the oven.

  They were all put into the oven together.

  ‘It’s dark in here,’ said the eggs.

  ‘Warm too!’ yawned the melting butter.

  ‘Which of us is which?’ asked the flour.

  ‘I think I’ll puff myself up,’ said the baking powder. ‘This is such a cosy oven.’

  They were all quiet then, enjoying the cosy oven. No-one spoke for a long time.

  Then, all of a sudden, a new voice spoke.

  It was an eggish, buttery, floury voice — sweet as sugar, and as cheery as a cherry.

  ‘I know what I am!’ it said. ‘I am … I am …’

  But it couldn’t quite think of the right word.

  Someone opened the oven.

  ‘Oh Mum!’ cried Mary. ‘What a lovely cake!’

  ‘So that’s what I am now,’ said the voice. ‘I’m a cake.’

  Mary’s mother iced the cake.

  ‘Now I’m wearing my best coat,’ said the cake.

  Mary sprinkled the cake with hundreds and thousands.

  ‘Now I am wearing my jewels,’ said the cake.

  Mary’s mother put four candles in the cake.

  ‘Now I’m wearing my crown!’ the cake cried.

  Mary’s mother wrote on the cake. She wrote, ‘Happy birthday, Mary.’

  ‘I knew I was special,’ cried the cake. ‘I am a birthday cake.

  Hooray hooray for the birthday cake.’

  And that’s just what Mary said too.

  Margaret has confessed to her delight in the part where the butter says to the sugar, ‘Listen, they’re playing our tune’ and the sugar replies ‘Shall we dance?’. ‘I’m very fond of that line. It seems to me it works well enough to describe the creaming of the cake, and for an adult it has all sort of ironic associations with romance.’

  She has always found the story ‘very satisfying … though it is, in many ways, a concealed story … in strange ways The Cake discharges some of the functions commonly associated with literature in the academic — what I jokingly called the noble — sense. Underlying the simplicity of the language is a set of ideas that add up to a joke about the world and the way we fit ourselves in it’— suggesting pleasure, women’s lives (‘in my mother’s generation they were often judged according to the quality of cake they produced’), and a moment of glory for a particular child; while ‘a teacher might think, privately, that it is concern with identity crisis and emerging self-definition … the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and dried fruit, their initial bewilderment, their existential speculation and their final melting together to form the one inclusive character, the cake … even a text in a school reading series can contain ideas that fulfil the imaginative speculation of the writers and which are also ideas for the reader to grow into.’

  By the end of the 1980s, Margaret’s ‘school readers’ had dramatically increased her output to something over 150 books, ‘most of which are very short, because, if ever I count my published works (and I don’t think I have ever done so for my own gratification) I always include the books I have written for three reading series all originating in New Zealand, but available internationally.

  ‘This is not simply to inflate my total. I regard some of these educational stories with as much affection as anything I have ever written … [but] I have become rather more hesitant — a little dismayed by various series which display the same writer’s name over and over again — even when it happens to be my own. I think such a series looks claustrophobic and my own experience suggests that though writing many stories can be a powerful financial inducement, on the whole one is better to be rather more circumspect. A series, intended to support a whole language approach to reading acquisition in the most truthful way, should offer a large number of books in a classroom, but it should also ideally display the freshest possible ideas from a wide variety of authors and illustrators … [although] simple, very simple, as emergent texts, have to be, one can still sometimes hear a particular voice, a particular perception coming through, and it seems to me
that, ideally, these voices should be as diverse as possible.’

  Margaret’s best ‘school reader’ years were for the Department of Education from 1982 to 1985, for Shortland between 1984 and 1992 and for Wendy Pye Ltd from 1986. It would be a formidable task to track them all down (and impossible to calculate how many millions of children would have read them in English or many translations around the world) and they comprise a body of work greater, with the notable exception of Joy Cowley, than most authors of this very specialised and difficult literary genre would hope to achieve in a lifetime. The best are miniature poetic masterpieces.

  In the mid-1980s Margaret was able to tell an interviewer: ‘I think I have made a lot of money over the past three years, relative to a lot of other writers anyhow, but I have been writing since I was seven and have only recently felt financially comfortable.’ Now, at last, she was able to contemplate a major addition to her house. Around the original modest 1965 structure was wrapped a handsome, three-tiered addition, giving her a spacious high-ceilinged living area with a huge stone fireplace capped with a burnished copper hood. Picture windows framed the view up Lyttelton Harbour to the Pacific Ocean, and one wall was lined with bookshelves so high a librarian’s ladder was needed to reach the volumes at the top. At last, too, she had a room of her own.

  ‘The room where I write is my bedroom but it is my workroom too. I sit with my back to a view of trees and, in winter, of the hills behind the trees. It is always there, when I turn around. My room is lined with bookcases full of books and there are many books on the floor. The pictures over my bed are from books of my own, but there are pictures done by my daughters Penny and Bridget. I have several filing cabinets and a chair and a bed which is covered with papers during the day. On a bench along one wall is my word processor, a fax machine, a photocopier and a tape recorder. On the wall behind this bench are pictures, notes about work I must do and so on. There are several clocks and usually a few cats, particularly in the winter when it is cold outside. One cat likes to sleep behind the printer of the word processor.’