Made in New Zealand - Margaret Mahy

Television (Full Length) – 2004

When I was a child I certainly had a period of time where I was determined to make imagined scenarios real.
– Margaret Mahy, at the start of this documentary

...I did have an editor write to me and ask me not to mention Christmas and summer in the same breath as it were, which was something I stood out against.
– Margaret Mahy on her desire to keep New Zealand settings in her books

...her characters are just so realistic. There's no sense that she's talking down to her audience. I think it is the characterisation of the main characters that just bring them alive, and there's just so much in her books that readers can identify with. I know I did when I was a teenager...
– Faber & Faber editor Julia Wells

...sometimes when they're in your head, they just seem as if they've got the potentiality to be so marvellous. You put them down on paper and they're not as good as you intended them to be in the first place. And you write and correct and change, trying to bring them back towards the initial marvellous book that you had in mind...
– Margaret Mahy on the challenges of writing books, near the end of this documentary

The greatest teenage books and the greatest children's books come from somewhere way inside the author, don't you think? And I think Margaret has that.
– Children's book critic Julia Eccleshare praises Margaret Mahy