We ended our term learning about someone that interested us. We had to read biographies about our person and collect information that would help us write our own biography catching their greatest moments. Below is a sample of our biography written by Amy Bonnor, Year 8, on Margaret Mahy.
Wonderfully weird poems, amazing adventures and fantastic fantasy. These are the types of books Margaret Mahy loved to write. Margaret’s father, Frances George Mahy, was the one who inspired her to write by telling her adventure stories as a child. Now her books are everywhere, for example, there are around about 100 books in the Morrinsville Intermediate School library alone.
Born in 1936 in Whakatane, Margaret was the eldest of five. Her father was a bridge builder and her mother a teacher. She was apparently a slow learner and really hated maths. From around 1965 Margaret lived in Governors Bay. Margaret was also a solo mother to two daughters.
Over the years Margaret has won numerous awards. One of those was the International Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her lasting contribution to children's literature. This award has only ever been given to thirty writers and she is the only New Zealand author to win this. In 2009 she was made one of the twelve local heroes and has a bronze bust of herself in Christchurch. The year after that, her book The Kaitangata Twitch was made into a television series.
Even though her books had strong supernatural elements, they related to everyday life, and for some her stories changed lives . She was a passionate woman who loved to write, she got a tattoo of a skull with a rose in its teeth because she was writing about a person getting a tattoo and wanted to write it convincingly. She was also a motivator. An example of this is when she was seven and had a book published in the children's page of the Bay of Plenty Beacon. She showed this to her class to let them know they could write well even at their age.
Sadly Margaret died in 2012 after being diagnosed with an inoperable cancerous jaw tumour. She lived a long life to the ripe age of 76, and all over the world her books are still inspiring people.
Amy Bonnor, Yr 8.
Term 1 2016.
