Monday, August 13, 2012

Betty Gilderdale - My Life in Two Halves - a memoir

My life in Two Halves is the perfect title for this just-published book. The photographs on the front cover above show one from each half of that life, Betty as she is today and with Alan on their wedding day in 1949.The two photographs on the back cover also come from each half of her life:
 Off to Malta, October 1944 in her Telcom uniform
Working on The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature, 1988


To read Betty Gilderdale’s memoir My Life in Two Halves - is to get to know one of New Zealand’s well-known literary scholars, writers and critics.
Today of course she is a household name for her Little Yellow Digger books which have sold more than 350,000 copies, but she was also The New Zealand Herald’s children’s book reviewer for 25 years, a lecturer in English at Colleges of Education and is the author of more than 10 books.Perhaps best of all though she is known and respected for her work over more than 40 years in the area of New Zealand children's literature.



Her published works include the ground-breaking, A Sea Change: 145 Years of New Zealand Junior Fiction, The Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand Literature (Children’s Literature Section),  Introducing Margaret Mahy and the seminal biography, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker.

My Life in Two Halves is a lively and engaging memoir spanning two countries. Some of her most formative years were spent in one of the most heavily bombed areas of Greater London. She worked with Cable and Wireless in Malta before going to London University where she met her husband, Alan. After they married they lived in a Surrey village where their children were born.
The emigrated to New Zealand in 1967 to teach at the Quaker-run Friends School, Wanganui. After its closure they shifted to Auckland.
There she became a founding member of both the Children’s Literature Association and Children’s Media Watch. This was where I first met Betty and I must say her writing about those years filled me with nostalgia, reading all those names, most now retired and some no longer with us - Tom Fitzgibbon, Joan Brockett, Dorothy Butler, Mary Wilkinson, Yvonne Dugdale. Kaye Callan, Ian Free, Ted Reynolds, David Ingram, Sarah Metge and others too.
 Betty lives on Auckland's North Shore with her husband Alan.

Betty Gilderdale: My Life in Two Halves – a memoir  |  Published by David Bateman Ltd  | August 2012  |   rrp. $29.99

Footnote:
Kim Hill spoke to Betty on her Saturday morning programme yesterday - in case you missed it here is the link.




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