Our interview with children’s author Mem Fox continues ? and you can have your say at the bottom of this page…
When are you your happiest?
When I’m planting herbs (she says longingly and then laughs her head off). I love planting herbs. Number one, because I love cooking, and it’s nice to get my own herbs out of the garden. The other thing is you’re in a Zen situation. Your brain is on hold, the earth is soft, the air is quiet, the world in your head is at peace. It’s so wonderful. I’m also very happy when I’m with either my daughter or my husband. I just love being with them.
Malcolm seems very protective of you?
Oh, he is very, very protective. In fact he’s physically protective. He still puts his arm around me in the street ? 40 years later. It really is fabulous. I’m so lucky.
You once said that you wrote because you wanted to be adored? Have you reached the desired level of adoration?
Well, if I have reached that level of adoration, I put a bullet hole through it these last few weeks (roars with laughter). I think, in some ways, I am more adored at the moment than I ever have been, in spite of everything. The hysterical thing is when this controversy broke, I sold three-and-a-half times as many books in that week than I normally do. That shows the level of support that I have. People know that I love working with parents, I love working with kids. This stuff will all blow over. It’s a moment in time. Every time I think, “Oh what a disaster”, I think of Zimbabwe which is where I grew up. I have African friends in Zimbabwe whose salary is worthless the moment it’s paid. That is a disaster. That is where my mind and money should be.
Do you ever wonder what would have happened had you not been driven to get Possum Magic published?
It’s been so long that Possum Magic has been out (25 years) that it’s almost incomprehensible to envisage a life without that book. I was a university lecturer when I wrote that book and I continued to be one for 14 years after that because my absolute passion is teaching. I love teaching, the laughter of teaching, challenging the students to learn ? oh my God teaching is sensational. I suppose if I hadn’t been a writer I would be Professor Mem Fox and that would have been entirely satisfactory.
You spent many years craving the approval of your mother, Nan, why?
My mother was gorgeous. Everybody loved her. She was very warm, very funny. But she had three daughters and she was terrified, as any mother is, that we would misbehave in public or become ‘up ourselves’. The thing she was most frightened about was that we would grow up thinking ourselves big. She’s an Australian, that’s the way we think ? ‘we mustn’t get above ourselves’. In the States they talk about success, they celebrate it. They actually talk about success without embarrassment. Whereas here, we don’t, and it’s cringe-making when people do. And my mum was frightened of cringing over what we did. I think she was a little bit frightened about praising us. She once said, “I will never say I love you, I will only show it, because I can’t bear that ‘I love you’ phrase ? it’s so empty.”
Did you eventually win your mother’s approval?
I have striven in my life largely to get to the point where Mum actually said, “Well done”. And she did on a particular book called Whoever You Are, she said, “I love this book.” And I couldn’t believe it. I nearly cried because I was so stunned by the remark. It showed me then that she trusted me enough not to get above myself. She was petrified of me getting above myself. And she should have been, because I have (roars with laughter). She’d be horrified if she knew me now. I’ve been in America too long.
You’re a great advocate for reading out loud to our kids. Is there a difference between a child who has been read to and one who hasn’t?
There’s not only a difference in their scholastic achievement, there’s physical difference in their brain development. Children’s brains have been scanned at the age of three. The kids who have been read to have much denser brains. They are actually physically different. It is astonishing.
What are the consequences of not reading out loud to your child?
Well, number one, if you have not read regularly and happily, not as a sense of duty, to the kids in your life between birth and five ? often, the same books over and over again, ? at least ten minutes a day, it’s not an onerous thing. If you haven’t done that, please don’t expect that when your child gets to school at five that they’re going to find learning to read easy, or happy, or quick. The children who have been read to, regularly ? I cannot emphasise that enough ? they fly into reading.
I was an academic who taught teachers for 24 years about the teaching of reading and writing. I realised over those 24 years, if children are not read to in the first five years of their lives, their schooling is difficult. Also, if they’re not read to in the first five years of their life, their brains don’t develop as well as they might, the bonding attachment doesn’t develop as well as it might. There’s a huge amount that goes on.
Is it true you learned to write while your parents were missionaries in Rhodesia and that you wrote in the dirt while attending a blacks-only mission school?
Yes that is true. I can remember it clearly. I can remember dusting the earth over the letters we wrote. I can just feel the side of my hand wiping over the earth so I can write a letter. It’s incredible, such a simple start to writing and now here I am, all these years later texting!
How amazing were your parents educating you at an all black school?
Yes. Mum and dad were Christian missionaries. I was the only white kid at the school, but then I was sent away. My parents got in trouble because you weren’t allowed to have white kids in black schools and vice versa.
What is firing you up about life now?
It’s my new book, Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. I am so fired up by this book. Not only because I adore it. But also that I am in awe of the fact that I have had a book illustrated by Helen Oxenbury who is probably the most famous English illustrator. I just can’t believe my luck. I’m fired up because it fits so well into my read aloud campaign. You have to read to babies because if you don’t how are they going to learn to talk, or to read? This book is for babies and is filled with babies, I think people will read to their babies with this book. Plus, the end of this book makes people cry. It did it to me. Adults keep coming up and telling me, “I cried at the end of your book”. Parents will like it because it’s so short. I try to write short books because I know parents are exhausted. You don’t have to read a long book and little kids don’t want a long book either. So you’ve got a short book, beautifully illustrated, for babies. I’m wildly fired up about this book. It meant so much to team up with Helen. I can barely articulate it. I’ve made a huge friend.
You’re the only Australian author whose work has outsold The Da Vinci Code.
Um, I think so. I’ve sold three million copies of the one book and I’m not sure who else in the country has sold three million copies of the one book. That’s only within Australia.
Think of all the happy kids out there?
I do. One of the nicest things that I have done, when I’m dying and I’m thinking about the footprint that I’ve left on the earth, I can say to myself I made a lot of children really happy. I just hope that I can forget that at one very brief moment in my life, I made some parents a little bit cross.
Are your dreams vivid and is that where your inspiration comes from?
I have vivid dreams, but I think my subconscious works on stories. I don’t dream them.
You say you love a full moon, green paper clips, a clean kitchen sink and singing alone in the car. Which of these is your favourite thing and why?
Probably a full moon. Because I grew up in Africa without street lights, and because the sky is so huge in Africa, as it is in outback Australia, the awesome spirit of the moon just got into my childhood heart. I’d be out on the back steps of our house in Africa on my own ? I was a ‘writerly’ child even then ? I was sort of communing in this darkness, just me and the moon and my thoughts. I got all goose fleshy just thinking about it now. And my husband and I happened to marry on a full moon. We were rowing on a dam at midnight on our honeymoon (also in Africa) with the moonlight on our faces ? I love the moon.
And you say you loathe brown clothes, mobile phones in airport lounges and cleaning up dog vomit. Which of these is worst?
Brown on me, I meant. But the worst is mobile phones in lounges especially people using mobile phones in a place that says it’s a mobile free zone. I don’t understand what it is about people that they think that we are so interested in their personal lives and their businesses. It’s not only rude, it’s stupid.
What do you say to people who think writing a kids book is easy? Because you’ve said, “Writing a children’s book is the most frustrating, difficult, maddening activity.”
It is. It really is. It’s so blank, blank, hard. I didn’t swear. But it is. Anybody can write a book for kids really. But it’s the rhythm of the words that makes children love it or not love it. It’s getting the rhythm right that is the secret. And a lot of people don’t have the ability to do that. I think that I have the ability to do it. Number one, because I now do believe I have a talent. I used to think it was just hard work. But if I have that talent, if I was born with it, it has been honed by the fact that I grew up on a mission bathed in the language of the King James version of The Bible. It has every comma and full stop in the right place and all the syllables are in the right place. The most beautiful language ever written. Then, of course, I went to drama school and I learned Shakespeare by heart. I know in the marrow of my bones about rhythm. I cannot explain it to anybody, but I know it. I’m fortunate because I know rhythm, I can write for kids, they love it, their parents love it too, and life is good. But if you can’t get the rhythm right in a sentence, you shouldn’t begin to start writing for young children.
Have Madonna and Fergy, The Duchess of York, who claim to be children’s authors, got the rhythm right?
No. No they haven’t. They write books that are here today and gone tomorrow. They make a lot of money and they con a lot of people into buying books because of who they are. But it breaks my heart to have people say just because of who I am I can write a children’s book. People trip up doing that all the time.
Do you laugh at the memory of graffiti being scrawled at Flinders Uni ? “Mem Fox Is Not God”?
I think a lot of people in this country would agree with that at the moment, (she says laughing loud) I laugh a lot about it. My students, who grew to love me and trust me, would come and tell me this graffiti was on the walls of the men’s toilet and I would howl with laughter. It was a men’s toilet wall. And it was pretty prominent. I loved the way my students would come and tell me. I’m not God. I just want my herb garden.
By Glen Williams
Pictures: Grant Turner
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