Brief Introduction

Mem Fox was born in Australia, grew up in Africa, studied drama in England, and returned to Adelaide, Australia in 1970, where she has lived with her husband, Malcolm, and daughter Chloë, happily ever after.

Mem Fox is Australia’s most highly regarded picture-book author. Her first book, Possum Magic, is the best selling children’s book ever in Australia, with sales of over three and a half million. And in the USA Time for Bed and Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge have each sold over a million copies. Time for Bed is on Oprah’s list of the twenty best children’s books of all time. Mem has written over thirty picture books for children and five non-fiction books for adults, including the best-selling Reading Magic, aimed at parents of very young children. Her most recent book Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes beautifully illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, was on the New York Times bestseller lists for 16 weeks in 2008/2009.

Mem Fox was an Associate Professor in Literacy Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide (Australia), where she taught teachers for twenty four years until her early retirement in 1996. She has received many civic awards, honours and accolades in Australia, including two honorary doctorates. She has visited the United States over one hundred times, mostly in her role as a literacy expert although she is also a well-known author in America. She is an influential international consultant in literacy, but she pretends to sit around writing full time.

Her new book, about to be released in June 2009, is Hello Baby!. She hopes everyone, especially babies, will adore it.

Life Story

I was born in Melbourne, Australia, in March 1946, but left at the age of six months to go to Africa with my parents, who were missionaries. The mission we lived on, Hope Fountain, was a few miles from the city of Bulawayo, in Zimbabwe, which used to be called Rhodesia. In my first year at the mission school I was the only white child so all my close friends were black. We learned to write by drawing our letters in the red earth. Later, we graduated to writing squeakily on slates. Now, of course, I use a computer, but I still use a pencil and paper whenever I have a writing problem to solve. My brain loves it when I write in pencil.

My father’s name—Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge—is also the title of my second book. Miss Nancy, in the same book, is my mother; the rest of Miss Nancy’s name comes from the names of my two sisters, both of whom are younger than I am: Jan Delacourt (who used to be Jan Delacourt Cooper) and Alison Partridge.

In the mid-sixties, totally unsophisticated, I went to drama school in London and spent three happy years changing my accent, speaking Shakespeare, singing Beatles’ songs, wearing miniskirts, and dyeing my hair—a habit I haven’t grown out of. It’s been red for years, and will remain so until I die. Being a red-head has become my brand, my recognizable logo.

I took a great risk in 1969 and married an Englishman—a teacher of drama, who is now a gorgeous retired drama lecturer. Malcolm and I have lived happily ever after. Our daughter, Chloë, to whom Possum Magic is dedicated, was born in 1971. She was journalist for seven years, is now a high school teacher of French and English at a Catholic girls’ school, and has been pre-selected as a Labor Party candidate for the state seat of Bright in South Australia, in the March 2006 elections.

Back to me—after all, this is all about me!!—as a mature age university student in my early thirties, I studied children’s literature at Flinders University. This set me, totally unawares, on the road to fame and even fortune since it was during that course that I wrote the first draft of my first book: Possum Magic. It was rejected nine times over five years but went on to become (and continues to be, to this day) the best-selling children’s book in Australia, with over two million copies sold. In 2004 its 21st birthday was celebrated with parties and events in thousands of schools and other places around Australia, and a new re-designed edition was launched. The colours of the original film of the illustrations were fading because it had been reprinted so many times.

Since Possum Magic I have written 28 books for children. Around half of these have become best sellers which just goes to show that from time to time I write pathetic books as well as great ones! Some of my books have different titles and different illustrators in the USA but essentially they are the same inside.

One of the best moves I ever made was to re-train, in 1981, out of drama into literacy studies to find out how children best learn to read and write. Literacy has become the great focus of my life—it’s my passion, my battle and my mission and my exhaustion. If you are the parent of a child aged from 0-7 I hope you will enjoy my best selling books for parents: Reading Magic: how your child can learn to read before school and other read aloud miracles. If you are a teacher I hope you will be challenged but also thrilled by my book Radical Reflections, about the teaching of reading and writing.

Writing is my second love. My first is teaching, to which I admit an addiction so powerful that I’m surprised I had the courage to retire early (in 1996, aged 50) from my position as Associate Professor, Literacy Studies, in the School of Education at Flinders University, South Australia. I taught there with great satisfaction and happiness, fulltime, for twenty four years. I cried three times in my last class.

I now spend most of my time writing presentations urging parents, teachers, and others to read aloud to children aged between 0-5, and I travel the world doing it. I travel a great deal as an influential international literacy consultant to places as diverse as Guam, Tanzania, China, and of course to the USA which I have visited 83 times (I’m writing this in March 2005). I have spoken at hundreds and hundreds of conventions in the States. I also travel—I mean I work like a tired old dog!—extensively around Australia as well, which I particularly adore since this country is my home.

If you read this, and like my books, and keep buying them, I promise to continue to write picture books for children even though it’s the hardest job in the world and much more of a grind that most people realize.

I live in a beachside suburb in Adelaide, South Australia, with my husband and two divine little dogs. Chloe lives close by. And I have wonderful friends who are the incredibly important to me. Perhaps that’s why I wrote my latest book about friendship. It’s called Hunwick’s Egg and is illustrated by Pamela Lofts. She and I haven’t worked together since Koala Lou in 1988, and everyone loves Koala Lou, so my hopes are high for my little bilby, Hunwick…

Children’s Books

Where The Giant Sleeps (2007)
A Particular Cow (2006)
Hunwick’s Egg (2005)
The Magic Hat (2002)
Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild! (2000)
Sleepy Bears (1999)
Whoever You Are (1998)
Boo to a Goose (1996)
Wombat Divine (1995)
Tough Boris (1994)
Time for Bed (1993)
Memories (1992)
Sophie (1989)
Shoes from Grandpa (1989)
Feathers and Fools (1989)
Night Noises (1989)
With Love at Christmas (1988)
Koala Lou (1988)
Guess What? (1988)
Goodnight Sleep Tight (1988)
A Bedtime Story (1987)
The Straight Line Wonder (1987)
Sail Away: The Ballad of Skip and Nell (1986)
Just Like That (1986)
Hattie and the Fox (1986)
Arabella, the Smallest Girl in the World (1986)
Zoo Looking (1986)
A Cat called Kite (1985)
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge (1984)
Possum Magic (1983)

***from the offical Mem Fox website***