English Essentials

Mem Fox has written over 25 books for adults and children including Possum Magic which has sold over two million copies and is the bestselling picture book ever in Australia. Mem has been presented with many awards including an AM in the 1993 Australia Day Honours for services to the cultural life of Australia; an SA Great Award for Literature in 2001; the Prime Minister’s Centenary Medal in 2003; and was shortlisted for the Australian of the Year in 2004. She worked as an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies in the School of Education at Flinders University, South Australia for twenty-four years and is now an international literacy consultant. Her latest picture book Where is the Green Sheep? with illustrations by Judy Horacek, will be published in May.Mem Fox was born in Melbourne in 1946. At six months she went with her parents to Africa where she grew up on a mission on Zimbabwe. Her father’s name – Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge – is also the title of her second book, while Miss Nancy, in the same book, is her mother.