The Magical Verse of Margaret Mahy: The Word Witch Tessa Duder (ed), David Elliot (illustrations) HarperCollins, $44.99, ISBN 9781869507077 The Dark Blue Hundred-ride Bus Ticket Margaret Mahy HarperCollins, $19.99, ISBN 9781869508166 Awesome Aotearoa: Margaret Mahy’s History of New Zealand Margaret…
The Magician of Hoad Margaret Mahy HarperCollins, $39.99, ISBN 9781869506872 The Magician of Hoad takes Margaret Mahy into new territory – new for her at least. Her earlier YA novels were set in the real world. A highly-coloured version of…
Marvellous Codes: The Fiction of Margaret Mahy ed Elizabeth Hale and Sarah Fiona Winters Victoria University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864735162 Any addition to critical publications on Margaret Mahy is to be welcomed. Elizabeth Hale’s and Sarah Fiona Winters’ Marvellous Codes:…
Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun Janet Frame, illustrations by David Elliot Random, $29.95, ISBN 1869417240 Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun, by novelist Janet Frame, was first published in 1969. In those days not many…
Dreamhunter Elizabeth Knox HarperCollins, $24.95, ISBN 0732281938 The Time of the Giants Anne Kennedy Auckland University Press, $27.99, ISBN 1869403428 Maddigan’s Fantasia Margaret Mahy HarperCollins, $24.95, ISBN 1869505611 Maddigan’s Fantasia opens with Garland Maddigan’s note to herself, “Written down things…
Home truths and fantasy worlds, Kathryn Walls
Kathryn Walls identifies the realism beneath Mahy’s magic. Margaret Mahy has been repeatedly described as “magical” or “marvellous”, her fiction as “fantastic.” These conveniently alliterating adjectives seem apt partly because so much of Mahy’s work is classifiable as fantasy, and…
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