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
fearless halfway humour learned maybe physically prevail primary punch quickly realised situations somebody trying using worked
Halfway through primary school, I realised that I was not as physically strong or fearless as many kids. So, in situations of conflict, I quickly learned that it worked better for me to get out of situations or maybe kind of, you know, prevail in a conflict situation by using humour than by trying to punch somebody out.
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.
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.
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.
became finally life
When I did finally live in the Dandenongs, the mountain ash forests became an important part of my life.
I think probably you can either write for kids, or you can't. That ability to imaginatively be a child and see the world as a child and feel and think like a child - you either have that ability or you don't.
bit break exciting families kids less presents trauma
Step-parenting and being a step-sibling presents a lot of exciting opportunities. When families break up and re-form, there may be less order, less certainty, and a bit more trauma involved, but kids can end up having half-a-dozen parent figures.
I think, to be a successful author, you've got to be part recluse and part show-off.
type
Melbourne is my type of city, much more so than Sydney.
bad best flowing rather talk tend writers
I think the best writers use the language they use every day when they talk to friends. When we talk to each other, we tend to talk in short grabs rather than in long flowing sentences. I think that's not a bad way to write.
good kids outcome time
Kids who are nine, 10 and 11 are pretty sophisticated readers; they know that there isn't always a good outcome every time and that problems don't always have solutions.
dismissed
Kid's culture is often dismissed as superficial, like high fibre McDonald's, but it's so much more important than that.