All about Mem – too much information?

I come from a long line of preachers and teachers on my mother’s side of the family; and atheists, teachers and journalists on the other side. It would have been surprising had I not become a university graduate, let alone a speaker and writer. My maternal grandmother graduated from Sydney University in 1908 at a time when it was extremely rare for women to have had the opportunity to do so. My mother followed in her footsteps by graduating from the same university in 1935.

I was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, but left at the age of six months to go to Africa with my parents.

My parents were missionaries. My father was the director of the teaching training school on Hope Fountain mission, about 15kms outside the city of Bulawayo, in Zimbabwe, which used to be called Rhodesia. I lived on the mission from 1946-1965, when I went to drama school in London. And what a contrasting world that was!

Me on the mission see-saw in 1952

In my first year at the mission school I was the only white child so all my close friends were Africans. We learned to write by drawing our letters in the red earth with our fingers. Later, we graduated to writing squeakily on slates.

Now, of course, I write on a computer, an i-Pad and a smart phone, but I still use a pencil and paper whenever I have a writing problem to solve. My brain loves it when I write in pencil.

When the authorities found out that I was at a black school they told my parents it was against the law for me to be there, so I was taken away and sent to a white school, where I was extremely miserable and friendless for over a year. I spoke English with an Africa accent and was teased so much I used sit in the toilets and sob. At the age of six! I was at white schools from that time onwards.

My father’s name—Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge—is also the title of my second book. Miss Nancy, in the same book, is my mother; the rest of Miss Nancy’s name comes from the names of my two sisters, both of whom were younger than I am: Jan Delacourt (who used to be Jan Delacourt Cooper) and Alison Partridge. Jan lives in Italy. Alison has died. Alison became a paraplegic in her early twenties. Here are some photos of us at various times of our lives. I am the blonde and then I am the red-head….

My mother encouraged me early in my high school years to take up public speaking, for which I’m very thankful. I’ve had to make hundreds of speeches in my life, and so many in Australia I think by now I must have spoken to everyone, all 25 million, face to face. I won a public speaking competition in Bulawayo when I was 16. I was more naturally blonde then.

I think I was acting and putting on a show from the time I could walk. I did a lot of acting in my school years. This is me, second row, big hat, long black hair, being Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme in Moliere’s play of the same name, in my last year at high school, 1964. It was in English, not French, I hasten to add. I often played men as I’ve always had a deep voice and it was an all-girls school, so someone had to be the man. It was an all white school, also, as you see. I lived in a racist country.

In the mid-sixties, totally unsophisticated, I went to drama school in London and spent three happy years getting rid of my Rhodesian accent, speaking Shakespeare, singing Beatles’ songs, wearing miniskirts, and dyeing my hair—a habit I haven’t grown out of. I was brilliant red for years, but blonde now looks better in my aging state. Being a red-head had become my brand, my recognizable logo, so people who see my now are shocked and saddened.

At drama school I met Malcolm Fox, the love of my life. In 1969 I married him. He was a highly gifted teacher of French and drama, and is of course, now retired. who is now a gorgeous retired drama lecturer. Malcolm and I have been married for 55 years (as of 02:01:2024).

In my final year at drama school, 1968, Malcolm was a volunteer in Tunisia. He then became a volunteer in Rwanda and I joined him there, to teach English, in 1969, a few weeks after we were married. We returned to England that year and made plans to migrate to Australia. My beloved grandfather, Wilfrid Partridge, was 90 and lived in Adelaide, South Australia, so that’s where we decided to settle. We arrived in January 1970, planning to stay two years. We are still here.

Our daughter, Chloë was born in early 1971. After graduating for Adealdie University she trained in London as a journalist, and worked first in Adelaide and then in Paris; after that she re-training in teaching and became a high school teacher of French and English; after that she became a Labor MP in South Australia for 8 years, and then returned to teaching where she remains, extremely happy.

She is also, and more importantly, the mother of our adored grandson.

Back to me—after all, this is all about me!—as a mature age university student in my early thirties, I studied children’s literature at Flinders University. This set me, totally unawares, on the road to a certain level of fame and even fortune since it was during that course that I wrote the first draft of my first book: Possum Magic, as an assignment. It was rejected nine times over five years but went on to become the best-selling children’s book in Australia, with nearly 5 million copies sold. In 2004 its 21st birthday was celebrated with parties and events in thousands of schools and other places around Australia, and a new re-designed edition was launched. The colours of the original film of the illustrations were fading because it had been reprinted so many times. They now look gorgeous again. As I type this at the end of 2024, Possum Magic is still up there —although Where is the Green Sheep? is nipping its heels

This is a photo of me (left) and Julie Vivas, the illustrator, at the launch of Possum Magic at the Sydney Opera House in May 1983. All I can say is thank God for the art of dentistry. And the wombat and koala are real!

Since Possum Magic I’ve written many more books for children: over 50, I believe, at the last count in Dec 2024. I have also written five non-fiction books for adults. The title of my autobiography, in the USA edition, is ‘Dear Mem Fox, I have read all your books even the pathetic ones’, which was a quote from a child’s letter. Around half my picture books have become bestsellers, which just goes to show that occasionally I write good books as well as pathetic ones. A few of my books have different titles and different illustrators in the USA but essentially they are the same inside.

One of the best moves I ever made was to re-train, in 1981, out of drama into literacy studies, to find out how children best learn to read and write. Literacy has become the great focus of my life—it’s my passion, my battle, my mission and my exhaustion. If you’re the parent of a child aged from 0-7 I hope you will enjoy my book for parents: Reading Magic: how your child can learn to read before school and other read aloud miracles. If you are a teacher I hope you will be challenged but also thrilled by my book Radical Reflections, about the teaching of reading and writing, now available only in its USA edition.

Writing is my second love. My first is teaching, to which I admit an addiction so powerful that I’m surprised I had the courage to retire early (in 1996, aged 50) from my position as Associate Professor, Literacy Studies, in the School of Education at Flinders University, South Australia. I taught there with great satisfaction and happiness, full time, for 24 years. I cried three times in my last class, so sad was I to leave.

I now spend most of my time writing presentations urging parents, teachers, and others to read aloud to children aged between 0-5, and I’ve travelled the world doing it. As an international literacy consultant I’ve been to places as diverse as Bahrain, East Timor, Guam, Hong Kong, Oman, Tanzania, China, and of course to the USA, which I visited 118 times. I have spoken at hundreds of conventions in the States. I also travel—i.e. work!—extensively around Australia, which I particularly adore since this is my beloved homeland. And I continue to write picture books when the spirit moves me, so if you’re still reading this, and if you like my books, and keep buying them, I promise to continue to write picture books for children even though it’s the hardest job in the world and much more of a grind that most people realise. I have many new books in the pipeline, currently being illustrated. They will appear over the next five years. The latest of these (Dec 2024) is Meerkat Mayhem, illustrated by Judy Horacek.

I’ve received a number of awards over the years, and am extremely grateful for each of them:

The Dromkeen Medal for distinguished services to children’s literature 1990
An Advance Australia Award for an outstanding contribution to Australian literature 1991
A medal (AM) in the Australia Day Honours awards, for services to the cultural life of Australia, 1993
The Flinders University Chancellor’s Medal, 1994
The Alice Award, presented biennially by the Fellowship of Australian Women Writers, 1994
An honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia, 1996
The Flinders University Convocation Medal, 2001
A South Australian ‘SA Great’ award, for Literature, 2001
A Woman of Achievement award from Zonta International, 2002
The Australian Prime Minister’s Centenary Medal, 2003
Australian of the Year for South Australia, 2003, and finalist for the Australian of the Year 2004
An honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Flinders, South Australia, 2004
Appointed by Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark as one of five Australian ambassadors of Hans Christian Andersen in celebration of the author’s 200th anniversary, 2005
Children’s Language and Literature Achievement Award from the Speech Pathology Association of Australia, 2007
An honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Technology, Sydney, 2011
The Australian government’s official gift to the new royal baby, Prince George, is Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes 2013

As you see, I have not mentioned any of the sadness in my life. Of course there have been many hideous fears, sorrows, horrors and griefs: for example, all three of us sisters have had cancer and one has died of it. Dreadful things happen to almost all of us during our lifetimes and for much of our lives we think dreadful things are happening only to us. But as we grow older we look around in amazement to find everyone else sitting with us, in the same boat. Nevertheless, to focus on my ‘dreadful things’ would be to go back in time and re-live them, and what crazy person would want to do that? The future is what matters, lived with a resilient heart and a smiling face.

I continue to travel, work and write, but my main role right now is being a devoted grandmother. I hope that you and I will meet, one way or another, as our lives progress. All the best! Mem xxx

This is a photo of me (left) and Julie Vivas, the illustrator, at the launch of Possum Magic at the Sydney Opera House in May 1983. All I can say is thank God for the art of dentistry. And the wombat and koala are real!