Making Friends

by Margaret Mahy

Small Mrs. de Vere's large dog Titania and large Mr. Derry's small dog Oberon serve as the intruments that bring their masters together in an unexpected but quite successful friendship.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

26 pages, Library Binding

First published April 1, 1990

About the author

Margaret Mahy was a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. While the plots of many of her books have strong supernatural elements, her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up.

Her books The Haunting and The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance both received the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association. There have 100 children's books, 40 novels, and 20 collections of her stories published. Among her children's books, A Lion in the Meadow and The Seven Chinese Brothers and The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate are considered national classics. Her novels have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Catalan and Afrikaans. In addition, some stories have been translated into Russian, Chinese and Icelandic.

For her contributions to children's literature she was made a member of the Order of New Zealand. The Margaret Mahy Medal Award was established by the New Zealand Children's Book Foundation in 1991 to provide recognition of excellence in children's literature, publishing and literacy in New Zealand. In 2006 she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award (known as the Little Nobel Prize) in recognition of a "lasting contribution to children's literature".

Margaret Mahy died on 23 July 2012.

On 29 April 2013, New Zealand’s top honour for children’s books was renamed the New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret...

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book when I first started to read it, because of the theme of loneliness, and whilst there is a happy ending the story seemed a little without substance and simplistic and I found it a little disappointing. Good on its adjectives to describe the dogs.

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story about an older lady and gentleman who are both lonely, but pass each other without every saying anything, until they both get dogs.

[Kristi]

This books is a story about Mrs. de Vere finding a friendship with her dog and a story about Mr. Derry finding a friendship with his dog. One day, the two dogs find a friendship and bring together Mrs. de Vere and Mr. Derry creating an irreplaceable bond between.
I would teach this book in the lesson about how common characteristics and interests can bring together two unlikely people.

[Sabrina Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about two lonely old people going threw some ups and downs to meet each other. They became friends eventually. i didn't like this story too much as it was kind of long and drawn out. The illustrations were not very child-friendly or captivating.

[Cpt_bean]

Yeah.. wouldn't read it to the child. Not so much of an interesting story line.