I am so heavy of heart to write this post.

We’ve lost so many people in the children’s book community this year—big names like Maurice Sendak, lesser known but well-loved folk like blogger and writer Peter Sieruta, both from the US. Here in Australia, recently, we lost dear Jean Chapman, a writer and champion of children’s books and reading (and the only person—so far!—to ever dedicate a book to me!), and illustrator Pamela Lofts.

And now, we’ve lost Margaret Mahy.

I’m often asked about my favourite children’s and young adult authors, and for years and years now, I’ve often answered by saying, well, when I grow up, I want to be Margaret Mahy.

You know I have other favourite children’s authors, most notably Diana Wynne Jones, and now we’ve lost both her and Margaret. And as I write this, I keep remembering all the connections between their work—Chants and Changeovers and so on.

I’m more than a little bit heart-broken.

Margaret was one of the first international authors I heard speak, and I’ve always remembered (as anyone who heard it can attest) the absolute thrill of hearing her perform her incredible poem (later published as a glorious picture book) Bubble Trouble. (I looked for a video of Margaret performing Bubble Trouble without success—perhaps someone else knows of such a thing out there on line?) Margaret’s rhyming picture book texts (see also Down the Back of the Chair) set the highest benchmark possible for that most difficult of arts—poetry for children. (Don’t believe me? Read your way through the awful doggerel that passes for rhyming texts for children that make up a good whack of any publisher’s slush pile.)

I have so many favourite Margaret Mahy picture books—Margaret was a friend to cats, and I adore The Three-Legged Cat, but also check out The Great White Man-Eating Shark and so many others. Her junior fiction is also as good as it gets—funny, smart, subversive and about as child-friendly as you could ask for. The Great Piratical Rumbustification and The Very Wicked Headmistress were staples of The School Magazine when I worked there back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and they were also wonderful playgrounds for illustrators.

But for many readers, it is Margaret’s older children’s and young adult fiction that will live with us forever. The Changeover ranks high on the favourite books list of so many readers and writers, and I love it too (one of the great books about nascent teen sexuality ever written, no?), as I loved The Catalogue of the Universe, Memory and Underrunners, but my very favourite of all her novels is The Tricksters.

It’s quite a long time now since I’ve read The Tricksters, but so many of its moods and images continue to cast a long, welcome shadow over my reading (and writing) life. Harry’s secret novel. Those three creepy brothers. Family secrets. The mysterious Teddy Carnival. The sea… the sea…

We Australians have a habit of claiming New Zealanders as our own, and there has been many a time over the years that my colleagues around the world have assumed Margaret was an Australian. She wasn’t—she was essentially a New Zealander, but I think there’s a shared colonial, antipodean culture and world view that we share, and it goes some way to explaining why we hold Margaret and her books so dear. Or maybe we just recognise good writing, like anyone.

Because we’re clearly not alone in our love and reverence for Margaret. Already on child_lit and Twitter and Facebook, friends and colleagues around the world are expressing their great dismay and sorrow at the loss of this incomparable woman and writer.

And yes, I did know her. Not well, but I was so fortunate to have met her several times over the years, and to have published not one, but two interviews with her. She was warm and generous, circumspect and respectful. And funny.

The last correspondence I had with Margaret was after the June 2011 Christchurch earthquake, when I fielded many questions about her safety. She was grateful for the enquiries, and asked me to pass on the message that she was safe and well and staying with family.

And now she’s gone.  How we will miss, and remember her.