From Penguin Australia:
"Doug MacLeod - a Melbourne writer of books and TV. In 2008 the Australian Writers' Guild awarded him the Fred Parsons award for contribution to Australian comedy. (He has worked as a writer on shows such as Fast Forward and SeaChange, and as script editor on three seasons of Kath and Kim.) ... His best known book is Sister Madge's Book of Nuns, which started as a practical joke on a publisher. He left his full-time TV job in 2002 to focus on writing books for young adults. So far he has had seven novels published by Penguin. The most recent are The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher, a CBCA Honour Book in 2012 shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the Aurealis Awards, and The Shiny Guys, shortlisted for the 2013 CBCA Book of the Year Awards. One of his novels, The Clockwork Forest, was presented as a play by The Sydney Theatre Company in 2008, and in 2013 he wrote Margaret Fulton: Queen of the Dessert, a musical about the life of Margaret Fulton."
By chance I borrowed a book by Doug - Mozzie and Midge from the school library I visit each week.
I previously talked about Heather fell in the Water illustrated by Craig Smith. I have very fond memories of reading Sister Madge to groups of students when it was on the CBCA short list all those years ago.
We had several books of poetry in my former school library by Doug. Here is one is poems from the Australian Children's Poetry web site:
The Cheap Book of Verse
As you wander through these pages
Full of things composed by me
Though they’re full of rhyme and rhythm –
Never call them poetry.
Poetry is wise and witty,
Sometimes long and sometimes short,
Full of feeling and emotion
Words of beauty, words of thought.
In these pages you’ll discover
Writing of a different kind:
Several stupid situations
Told in words that aren’t refined.
Read them slowly, read them quickly,
Shout them loudly as can be,
Read them any way you like, but –
Never call them poetry
By Doug MacLeod
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