Mem Fox once jumped out of the shower and raced to her writing desk to get down an idea, so fearful that it might sail off in the wind before she had time to record it. It is in these quiet moments when ideas arrive.
Mem has written over 40 picture storybooks for children, many bestsellers and they have been published all over the world, in 23 different languages. She knows that when the imagination takes flight, you must be ready to jump onboard.
Mem always has 12 sharpened pencils on the go to ensure that her flow of words doesn’t come to a halt. Finding the rhythm is part of her endeavour. Early on, someone told her to find the lyricism in her writing. From then on, she has always read the words back to herself aloud, as we do with children. That is where the musicality of stories resides, the language that makes us lean into the narrative and remember, long after the pages have closed.
Mem encourages all parents to do the same, to read aloud to their children, to whisk them up into the story. To sing the tune of the story’s song.
Mem has long been an avid literacy devotee, something that was part of her life since she was born. She grew up in a house of books, once saying “I lived in a library, really.” There were the classics: red leather-bound Dickens, Shakespeare, Madame Bovary, poetry.
Amongst these literary landscapes was the vivid terrain of her childhood in Africa.
Mem was born in Melbourne in 1946 but at six months of age moved to Africa with her family. Her parents were missionaries there.
Mem described her childhood in Africa as enchanting.
“Lots of freedom, lots of kids to play with, Africans as well as white kids. Just millions of places to go, donkeys to ride, creeks to put boats in. It was fantastic.”
“I remember learning to drive on the football field at the mission with some of the older kids teaching me how to drive,” Mem laughs.
Mem said the experience was enchanting for her because she was a white person. She was constantly made aware of how lucky she was. She remembers being driven to an all-white girls school by car, while African children passed her in the other direction, walking three or four miles to get there.
“I grew absolutely immersed in a sort of anti-racist household, fully aware of the inequity of my existence in comparison to the African kids around me.”
“The racism I think has probably imbued my way of looking at the world, that we are all the same.”
In various parts of her storybooks, you can see how these formative experiences left indelible marks on Mem. Through her storytelling, she captures our shared humanity, despite our differences: Whoever You Are, I’m Australian Too to name a few.
With 78 years of experience behind her, Mem feels passionate about passing on the things that she thinks matter most. She loves to teach. She loves to talk. Coming from a long line of ‘teachers and preachers’, she loves to be with people and she loves to make people happy.
The playgroup age, zero to five years, is one of Mem’s focus areas.
“Everything starts the moment you are born,” said Mem. “The whole brain development. The bonding, the language development. Your happiness. Your future success in life. It starts in those first five years of life. In fact, the brain develops more in the first four months of life than it ever develops at that rate again. The first four months of life are incredibly important. The first year of life is the next most important because so much happens to the brain- the socialising, the bonding with parents. If children don’t bond with their parents, it is just heart breaking.”
Foremostly, Mem believes that the early years are about quality time spent together.
“The attention children are paid, to me, is fantastically important. The more attention that is given to being with a child, loving your child, just attention, just pay attention. Read, sing, talk, laugh, play, do all of those things, constantly.”
A child’s safety in the world is of upmost importance and Mem knows that stories and the closeness they bring facilitate this.
“The relationship between the reader and the read to- the giggles, the conversation that goes on around it- it’s so much more than the book.”
Mem talks about her daughter and grandson when they spy a familiar book on the shelf or in a bookshop. They immediately say, ‘Ooowh, remember…’ with such fondness. It is all tied up in the feelings and experiences that occurred at that early time.
“Still those books are remembered in later life, not just because we loved the books but really because we loved the hilarity and chat and interaction- and I’m coming back to the word love and I’m coming back to the word attention and of course all of that, having books in the house, means that kids pick them up by themselves.”
Mem visits a lot of schools and often wonders how she is going to capture the little kids, as well as the grade sixers. She said that Possum Magic can do it. One of her most famous books, Possum Magic has sold nearly five million copies and is still Australia’s bestselling children’s book.
Again, the lyricism, the ‘sonorousness’ as Mem describes it, draws people of all ages in.
Possum Magic was rejected nine times over five years when it was first written. It was originally called Hush the Invisible Mouse. When asked how she kept faith in the book during that time, the answer was to keep working at it. Mem wrote the book as part of a University assignment and got a fine mark- but it did not quite hit the mark with the publishing industry or children. It wasn’t quite there. Mem said for one thing it was too long. She spent a whole weekend toiling away, reducing the amount of words on each page. She explains how kids want to quickly digest what they see and jump onto the next page. Mem fast realised how vital the illustrators are in support of the words. They are a team.
“I have to kneel in front of my illustrators and kiss their feet. I cannot emphasise the importance of illustrators, I cannot emphasise the importance.”
When Mem reflects on what is important to her work as a writer of children’s books, one thing front of mind is her older readers- the parents and carers. They must enjoy the story, too. It must be a shared enjoyment. There must be an element of play.
Children do this naturally and freely and parents only encourage more of this when they are involved. Mem fully supports more of it.
“Nobody argues ever about the first five years of life. Nobody in education argues about the importance of introducing language and books and rhymes and songs and talk to the years zero to five, nobody argues about that. It is so important.”
Only two weeks ago, Mem was telling a group of school children and the teachers that a lot of her writing is done with her eyes closed on the couch.
“I am just lying on the couch and something will write itself. A problem I am having in a book will write itself or I might even get another idea for a book just by thinking. Just thinking.”
At the opening of Rick Reuben’s recent book about creativity, he quotes American painter and teacher Robert Henri, “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
Central to this exchange and the joy that we see spring off the page is the space that Mem creates. Time and space. As she encourages everyone with small children to create more of.
“It is sort of a meditative state,” said Mem, “then the tension goes through the open gate in your brain, all the tension goes and the creativity very slowly comes into your brain and you have the most magical ideas that you would never have if you just sat down to write. The nap, the shower, the traffic lights, sometimes a walk, if I am walking by myself I will have ideas then as well. You have to be at peace to have the best ideas.”
Mem’s life has been a tremendous adventure. As well as living in Africa and becoming a teacher, she attended drama school in England in her early twenties. Her mother encouraged her public speaking from a young age and this has been a thread linking her to the world of stories, and to people teaching and creating, forever more.
Mem’s grandmother graduated from Sydney University in 1908 and her mother in1935, something very rare for that time. While we may not always realise, those family linkages plait their way through our lives in different ways. In life, we collect different things from different places.
Mem confesses, writing for children is much harder than it seems. Children are discerning, honest, curious, ever learning, absorbing. They display their emotions in a way we conceal and they let them out. Most fundamentally, children are receptive to fun and affection and togetherness. They offer their love and to be loved deeply is to be open to the possibilities of light and hope and life- to learning. That is what Mem has been casting a net out to find and gift back to the readers all these years.
“Starting with the book upside down or back the front so the child is squealing, ‘Oh no that’s not right, you can’t start the book like that, it starts like this like this’- and in all of that is learning but its love. It’s love as well as learning. The learning is periphery to love.”
And through Mem’s books, over the course of time, through the generations, that is what has been shared abundantly- love and a great bit of yes, magic.
Article by Sinead Halliday
