Morris Gleitzman
Morris Gleitzman
Morris Gleitzmanis an English-born Australian author of children's and young adult fiction. He has gained recognition for sparking an interest in AIDS in his controversial novel Two Weeks with the Queen...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth9 January 1953
deeply enjoyed found kid kids realised stories until wrote
I wrote stories as a kid just for myself. One day, some of the kids in my class found some of my stories in my bag, and I was deeply embarrassed until I realised they enjoyed reading them.
images places scary stories
Boys, particularly, like stories where they can have images in their imagination, where they can go to scary places and experiment with what can happen.
aware becoming importance interested readers setting slowly stories younger
I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.
although characters stories struggling
Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.
bring engaging stories
Stories can bring alive the moral universe in a very vivid, useful, engaging way.
despair life side stories
I would never write stories with only despair and defeat and the dark side of life.
act basis cruel face feeling people prevailing stories
I like to write stories where young people have a strong feeling about something being fair or unfair, right or wrong, cruel or kind, and they act on the basis of that - often in the face of the prevailing limits of behaviour.
develop developed newly readers sort stories using
I like the idea of young readers using my stories as a sort of moral gym, where they can flex and develop their newly developed moral muscle.
biggest people stories type
The type of stories I write are about young people grappling with the biggest problems in their lives, often problems that are bigger than they're actually capable of solving.
type
Melbourne is my type of city, much more so than Sydney.
good kids outcome time
Kids who are nine, 10 and 11 are pretty sophisticated readers; they know that there isn't always a good outcome every time and that problems don't always have solutions.
dismissed
Kid's culture is often dismissed as superficial, like high fibre McDonald's, but it's so much more important than that.
develop grounding kids might
Kids aren't political, but around 10 years old, they are beginning to develop the moral grounding that might later, in their teens, develop into their first real political perspectives.
capacity entertain largely liked people
My capacity for humour may have come largely from my father - he liked to entertain people, make people laugh.