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It's like the old car the adults left standing under the macrocarpa tree at the back of the farm. The kids have taken it over and made an adventure playground in the same way they have taken over the stories we have stopped telling, and made them their own. — Jack Lasenby
Jack Lasenby's first book was published in 1976 and now, with more than seventeen titles to his credit, he is one of New Zealand's most popular children's writers. He has captured the minds and imaginations of children with his rare honesty, vigorous language and soaring adventures.
Born in Waharoa, Waikato, in 1931, Jack Lasenby grew up in the country he writes about in his Seddon Street Gang books. After a variety of jobs, including deer-culler and possum-trapper in the Urewera mountains, Jack became a primary school teacher, then editor of the New Zealand School Journal and later, a lecturer at the Wellington Teachers' College.
It was in 1987 with the publication of his first major novel, The Lake, that he took the plunge and became a full time writer. That and his next novel, The Mangrove Summer, were published to acclaim in the USA and UK by Oxford University Press.
He has since won the Esther Glen Medal, the Children's Book Award three times (1995, 1996, and 1998) and held the Sargeson Fellowship (1991), and Writer's Fellowships at Victoria University (1993) and Dunedin College of Education (1995). In 2003 he was the recipient of the Margaret Mahy Medal.
Jack Lasenby is a prolific, full-time writer, a challenging and superb performer and reader of his work. He is an excellent interviewee and enjoys, even provokes, controversy.
Aunt Effie
Aunt Effie's Ark
Aunt Effie and the Island that Sank
Aunt Effie and Mrs Grizzle
The Battle of Pook Island
Because We Were the Travellers
Dead Man's Head
Kalik
Mr Bluenose
Taur
The Shaman and the Droll
The Tears of Harry Wakatipu
When Mum Went Funny
Billy and Old Smoko
The Lies of Harry Wakatipu
The Waterfall
Harry Wakatipu