- Michelle Magorian
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Michelle Magorian Born 6 November 1947
UKOccupation Novelist Michelle Magorian (born 6 November 1947 in Southsea, Portsmouth) is an English author of children's books, including Goodnight Mister Tom, Back Home and A Little Love Song.
Contents
Biography
Michelle Magorian was born in Southsea. As a child she spent as much time as possible in the King's Theatre in Portsmouth and her ambition was to become an actress. After three years of study at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, she spent two years at Marcel Marceau's L'école Internationale de Mime in Paris. From there she launched into a professional acting career and spent a few years touring all over the country - from Scotland to Devon and then Yorkshire - working in repertory companies, taking any part she could. Michelle's worst stage part was playing Orinoco the Womble in a musical. All this time she had been secretly writing stories. In her mid-twenties she became interested in children's books, and decided to write one herself. The result was Goodnight Mister Tom, a winner of the Guardian Award and the International Reading Association Award. The book has also been adapted into a film and a musical. Since then she has published four more novels, two collections of poetry, a collection of short stories and two picture books.
Michelle wrote Goodnight Mister Tom in a novel-writing class. The idea for the book came from the colours in a song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. She thought of brown as an earthy, old colour and green as a colour of youth. The character of William Beech came into her head because she thought of a beech tree with its slim trunk and it gave her the idea for a slim young boy. Details for the story came from her mother's tales about her time as a nurse in the Second World War. It took Michelle four and a half years to write Goodnight Mister Tom because she was also working in the theatre and upon publication it quickly became an international success.
Michelle followed Good Night Mister Tom with Back Home, another story about the Second World War. However, the main character in Back Home is a young girl; the story details her struggle at being back home in England after five years of living with a family in America as an evacuee.
A Little Love Song (Not a Swan in the USA) is about gaining independence and finding love in wartime Britain.
Most of Michelle's other books are also set in the mid-1900s, often based around theatres.
In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate from Portsmouth University.[1]
Just Henry won the Children's Book category in the 2008 Costa Book Awards.[2]
Bibliography
- Goodnight Mister Tom (1980) (ISBN 0-06-440174-X)
- Back Home (1984) (ISBN 0-06-440411-0)
- Waiting for My Shorts to Dry (1989)
- Who's Going to Take Care of Me? (1990)
- Orange Paw Marks (1991)
- A Little Love Song (1991) (ISBN 0-7497-1061-6) published as Not a Swan in the USA
- In Deep Water (1992)
- Jump (1992)
- Not a Swan (1992)
- A Cuckoo in the Nest (1994)
- A Spoonful of Jam (1998)
- Be Yourself (2003)
- Just Henry (2008)
References
External links
Categories:- English children's writers
- 1947 births
- Living people
- People from Southsea
- Alumni of Rose Bruford College
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