The Boy who Made Things Up by Margaret Mahy illustrated by Lily Emo

Luckily for Michael one day his dad's car breaks down. The pair of them have to walk and after a short while Michael begins to use his imagination and involve his father in a wonderful adventure. By the sixth double spread the father has put away his distracting mobile phone and now he can fully enter into their imaginative journey to the seaside which in reality is far from this place. They play on the beach, dive into the ocean, swim to an island, watch the colourful fish and even enjoy a delicious ice cream delivered by a man on a unicycle.  By the end of the day the father has learned a very important lesson about the importance of family and the intrusion of too much time spent working when he should be enjoying precious time with his son. 

Margaret Mahy sadly died in 2012 but I think it is so important that we all continue to read and share her wonderful and extremely diverse body of work. She wrote picture books, junior novels, short stories, poetry and amazing young adult titles.  In fact Margaret Mahy was awarded the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen medal in 2006 for her body of work.  My favourite picture books are Jam; The Great white Man-eating shark; Beaten by a Balloon; The Pumpkin Man and the Crafty Creeper; The Three-legged Cat; The Boy who was Followed home; and The Man whose Mother was a Pirate.

The Boy who Made Things up was written by Margaret Mahy in 1982 and first appeared in her story collection The Chewing Gum Rescue and Other Stories. I was excited to see one of these older books was illustrated by Jan Ormerod.

The Margaret Mahy Illustration Prize is one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent illustration prizes, offering a unique opportunity for an unpublished New Zealand-based illustrator to illustrate Margaret Mahy’s classic stories. It was launched in 2019 to celebrate and honour the 50th Anniversary of Mahy’s A Lion in the Meadow.

Previous winners

2021 There's a King in the Cupboard illustrated by Minrui Yang

2020 The Boy who Made Things up illustrated by Lily Emo

2019 The Boy With Two Shadows illustrated by Sarah Greig (Originally illustrated by Jenny Williams 1971)

In 2022 the book will be The Witch in the Cherry Tree (1974). Here is the original edition:

I wonder which book will feature for 2023 and beyond. If I could talk to the organisers of this illustration competition I would loudly proclaim it should be The Pumpkin Man and the Very Crafty Creeper originally illustrated by Helen Craig. This story is such a joy to read aloud and it had sadly been out of print for too long!