Oh dear. Hornets in their nests. I poked at them and now I can’t get them out of my head or my hair. So I have to bounce back briefly into my Hot News Space. Just this once…
I was interviewed, recently, for a feature article in my home town. In the […]
October 14th 2007
Dear readers of the world
A funny story to start with…
In August I was at various schools in the South Australian countryside for the Premier’s Reading Challenge, a brilliant scheme run by Mike Rann, the premier (leader) of our state. One night I was interviewed on local television. The next morning, at the end […]
Hello again…and again!
I promise if I didn’t have a life I’d keep this website and its hot news updated daily, rather than spasmodically.
But, astoundingly, there is a real world outside the internet in which people talk to each other face to face, again and again, and have good times and laughter, and learn […]
Hello again, with blushes—
I often read other people’s websites and always tut-tut if they’re out of date. So go on, feel free to tut-tut over mine. I think I last updated it in late February but I must have done something technologically stupid because I see no February entry here! The fact that I’m 61 […]
Hello everyone!
I jumped into bed at 20 seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve and opened the very fat novel I was reading and loving, to make sure—as Malcolm and I clinked wine glasses to welcome in the New Year—that I’d be starting off 2007 as I mean to continue: reading, reading, reading. Reading is […]
Merry Christmas, everyone!
I note in our papers that much of the world, both Christian and non-Christian, is about to enjoy Christmas this year: ie ignoring the religious message but giving gifts to each other anyway, so my greeting is indeed to the whole world.
I will be updating my Hot News properly within […]
Too busy and too happy to write any news, mostly because nothing has happened apart from my education/speaking work in Australia which I absolutely adore, and a wonderful holiday on Lord Howe Island. I have taken up bike riding again for the first time in 40 years and now have an extra excuse not […]
Hello, hello!
Let’s not even discuss the guilt-ridden lateness of this up-date since it wastes time. It must be obvious that if it hasn’t been done recently I must have been busy doing other things like having fun communicating with thousands of live people in the breathing world at various venues and events around Australia and […]
Life is normal. I am tired, tired, tired!
Four celebrations in three weeks! I kept thinking I’d update this Hot News site when life returned to normal but I now realise that there’s no such thing as ‘normal’. This is it…
Survivor!
Hot, Cool and Cold News
Hello everyone!
I feel as if I’ve been all over Australia since I last wrote. I haven’t. It’s only been Sydney for the Read Aloud Summit, see below; Melbourne for a teachers’ seminar with Scholastic, whom I adore working for; and Newcastle, for the annual convention of the VIEW organisation which was terrific - all women, 900 of them from all over Australia, mostly retired and doing good and true things for the disadvantaged in their respective communities. I spoke at the convention dinner and needless to say I was wearing my best clothes, but in comparison with the VIEW ladies I was spectacualrly under-dressed. It made me nervous. I am rarely nervous. I stuck very closely to my prepared speech (I think I even clung to it!) whereas usually I diverge and extemporise in a light- hearted manner.
It’s full moon and I am OVER the moon with happiness.
Where Is The Green Sheep? has won not one, but two awards. It never rains but it pours! The Speech Pathology Association of Australia awarded ‘Green Sheep’ the Book of the Year, as the best book for Language Development in Young Children. […]
What I did on my holidays…
Yes, I have been on holiday. It’s true that I went to America to the American Libraries Association convention. I also went to ALOUD, a children’s book festival in Toronto. Both places had record breaking heat but as always the people I met and worked with made me […]
Hello everyone!
It’s a freezing winter’s night in Adelaide, June 22nd 2005, and it’s rather late at night and I’m going to America again in the morning, early, but I didn’t want to leave before I said goodbye, as it were.
It’s been a frenetic month since I came back from my last trip to […]
Hello again!
I meant to write this on the Anzac Day long weekend in Australia. I love a long weekend for any reason although I’m sorry soldiers had to die for this one. (Dear foreigners: look up Anzac Day on Google. It will tell you a lot about the Australian character and something […]
I’ll fill in the details later, but this is one of the secrets I couldn’t tell you last week.
Here I am with the handsome Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark in the Sydney Opera House on Monday, March 7th. I was nervous and excited beyond belief. The Crown Prince has appointed me as one of […]
Hello, I haven’t died.
It’s just that over summer (remember, you northern hemisphere people, while you freeze, we bake) the hot news is just not worth reporting: slept, gardened, slept, saw friends, slept, met politicians, slept, cooked, slept, went to the gym, slept, walked on the beach, slept, wrote speeches for 2005, slept, gave […]
Hello, hello!
I had to let the dust settle on the Australian and American elections before I ventured back into the world and tried to breathe again. You know my feelings so I’m saying nothing else other than _aarghhïñïäê‚øÀ_¸Óõåäÿêþõ÷õøå÷ïÞÝÛçÝ’ç’áñõøÀÓöÚÚýÓargghhÜ¢[öÞ¤£¢!!!
In 1996, when I took early retirement from Flinders University, I thought life would be calmer. I thought […]
Adelaide, Australia
Hello, again from Mem Fox. Remember me?
It’s sad, isn’t it, when websites are left to rot. They look so unloved, poor things, so dusty and so horribly faded. I’m so sorry.
Daily bloggers (how do they do it?) put me to shame but, hey, my long absence from this Hot News Space is good news, […]
I feel as if I’ve been in the papers every day for two and half months although of course I haven’t, although it has been often. Very embarrassing. First there was the publicity for Possum Magic’s 21st birthday, and then there was yet more publicity for the launch of Where Is The Green Sheep? It […]
Hot news! Yes! Possum Magic has returned to the best seller lists in its 21st year. I am beside myself. I feel exactly as I did 21 years ago when it hit the best seller lists for the first time and stayed there for months on end.
I would have been dismayed if it hadn’t sold […]
Hello again, from old Mem Fox!
I turned 58 on March 5th. I should be slowing down. I mean, being 60 is only two years off and 60 is ancient. Instead I find myself living way beyond the speed limit. Age is not wearying me. Yet. And I’m proud to reveal that tomorrow at my exercise […]
Hello, and my apologies for not updating my site in detail. I meant to do it this week but Chloe was in hospital for five days last week with viral pneumonia and motherhood comes before anything else. She is on the mend, thank God.
I am off to the USA and Canada within minutes but will […]
Life is too exciting for words. But words will have to suffice.
On Tuesday November 18th in Stockholm I met the daughter of Astrid Lindgren, author of the famous and adorable Pippi Longstocking books. Awesome! Lovely woman. And I had a grand time promoting Reading Magic, the Swedish edition. (I discovered that its title: Lasa Hogt […]
Hello world!
Here I sit in Adelaide at the end of the coldest October for 57 years which is as long as I’ve been alive. It’s been a mean and nasty winter.
A couple of weeks ago I flew to Anchorage, Alaska for six days - there and back - to get warm. Only joking. I went […]
Thank heaven it’s spring tomorrow! And roll on summer! At least the days are getting lighter Down Under.
We have suffered a miserably wet, wild, and windy winter in Adelaide. It makes us wonder in awe how people in the northern hemisphere survive, year after year, the long freezing dark and gloom of their harsh winters.
Hello! You have not been forgotten!
It’s late but at last I am packed and ready to leave for my 74th trip to the USA in the morning! I’ll be at the International Reading Conference on Orlando and then at a school in West Palm Beach and then at the new library in Salt Lake City.
When […]
My darling mother died yesterday. It was unexpected: too soon and far too quick. But my younger sister Alison and I were with her, holding her hand, breathing every anguished last breath with her, grieving in such an extremity of fear and inspiration that I will never be able to find the words to […]