Morris Gleitzman
Morris Gleitzman
Morris Gleitzmanis an English-born Australian author of children's and young adult fiction. He has gained recognition for sparking an interest in AIDS in his controversial novel Two Weeks with the Queen...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth9 January 1953
bring engaging stories
Stories can bring alive the moral universe in a very vivid, useful, engaging way.
books change great nearly reading shock stopped
In 1969, we emigrated to Australia. It was a big change. The heat, the flies, and the completely different tinned meats. The shock was so great, I stopped reading books for nearly a year.
along anarchy bit dangerous physically power taking
In all of my books, I'm taking them on an emotionally challenging and sometimes physically dangerous process with a bit of fun and anarchy along the way. With the power comes responsibility.
allow children develop easily produces scared strengths themselves
I want to help children develop strengths that allow them to feel they don't have to push things away mentally... If we 'cotton-ball' kids, it produces adults who are too scared to think for themselves and are easily manipulated.
develop developed newly readers sort stories using
I like the idea of young readers using my stories as a sort of moral gym, where they can flex and develop their newly developed moral muscle.
images places scary stories
Boys, particularly, like stories where they can have images in their imagination, where they can go to scary places and experiment with what can happen.
facing realised sentence soon stuck trying
I used to get stuck trying to find the first sentence of a story, then I realised that it was often because I didn't know what problem a character was facing in the story. As soon as I did, I could have the character trying to do something about it or have the problem whack him between the eyes.
aware becoming importance interested readers setting slowly stories younger
I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.
carries named
I've always been aware that to be named after someone from the past carries with it all kinds of bittersweetness.
beneath caught moved
If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.
closer discovered feelings
I discovered you can get closer to a character's thoughts and feelings in a book than in a film.
consequences either life reproduce seeking
Most of your life after puberty, you're either seeking to reproduce or living with the consequences of having done so. At 70, you start going back to being 11 again.
age decide group nine people themselves
At around nine or 10 years of age, young people start to decide for themselves what's moral or not, and that's why I like writing for that age group so much.
good interested stuff
It's our potential for good stuff I'm most interested in exploring, but that has most meaning when juxtaposed with things that can go wrong.