Mem Fox
About Mem Fox
Mem Fox is Australia’s favourite children’s picture book author. Her books, loved for their exquisite warmth of feeling and pitch-perfect language, have become classics all over the world. Born in Melbourne in 1946, Mem’s missionary parents took her to Africa at the age of just six months. As a child she went to the Hope Fountain mission school, near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, then at eighteen she left the country and moved to London where she studied drama. In 1969 she married Malcolm, a teacher, with whom she had a daughter, Chloë. It was during her early thirties, studying children’s literature at Flinders University, South Australia, that Mem penned the first draft of Possum Magic, which went on to become Australia’s best loved picture book, selling over two million copies. Her career as an author took off in dazzling fashion, giving rise to a string of bestselling picture books, including Time for Bed, Koala Lou and Hattie and the Fox. In 1981 Mem returned to university to study children’s literacy, a subject about which she is passionate. She went on to become an associate professor of Literacy Studies at Flinders University, retiring in 1996. She has written a number of books on literacy, including the bestselling Reading Magic: how your child can learn to read before school and other read aloud miracles, and continues to inspire audiences all over the globe with her lectures on the subject. The same is true of her new books, which thrill the critics (Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, was named a New York Times bestseller almost instantly) and delight her readers young and old. Mem lives with her family in Adelaide, South Australia.