Reading Magic: How your child can learn to read before school, and other read-aloud miracles

In this modern classic, bestselling author and educator Mem Fox explores the power and impact that reading aloud to our children can have—on literacy, development, confidence and connection. She explains the benefits and processes of reading, offers practical guidance and tackles enduring controversies from phonics to television.

Mem Fox is a retired Associate Professor of Literacy Studies from Flinders University and the author of over 40 books. Her first book, illustrated by Julie Vivas was Possum Magic (1983) and became a bestseller. Since then, her work has been translated into 21 languages and she’s received many awards. Reading Magic was first published in 2001.

Mem Fox was born in Melbourne in 1946. She grew up on a mission in Zimbabwe, went to drama school in London for three years in the mid-sixties, and returned to Australia in 1970, where she undertook further studies and taught drama and literacy for twenty-eight years. In 1996, she took early retirement from her position as Associate Professor in Literacy Studies in the School of Humanities at Flinders University in order to write and consult full time. She has been a literacy consultant in Australia, the United States, Taiwan, Guam, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania, has three honorary doctorates, and is well known as the writer of many best-selling picture books for children and several nonfiction books for adults.Mem Fox lives with her family in Adelaide and pretends to write for children full time.

Judy Horacek's first picture book was the beloved Where is the Green Sheep?, created with Mem Fox, inspired by an etching of Judy's. That book won the 2005 Children's Book Council Book of the Year-Early Childhood Medal and has sold over a million copies in Australia. Mem and Judy have since created four more books together, including Good Night Sleep Tight and its companion, Bonnie and Ben Rhyme Again. Picture books that Judy has written as well as illustrated include Yellow is My Colour Star, These Are My Hands/These Are My Feet, and The Story of Growl. Judy is also a cartoonist and her work has been regularly published in the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Canberra Times and the Australian. Ten collections of her cartoons have been published, the most recent of which is Now or Never. Her website is at www.horacek.com.au.