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In 1984, with his fiftieth birthday approaching, Walter McVitty felt it was time for a seachange in his life. He chose to walk away from the security of a long and successful career as a teacher, academic, writer and broadcaster in Melbourne to move to Sydney to try his luck in publishing, a field in which he had no practical experience or training. At the inspired and inspiring suggestion of his wife Lois, a school librarian, he set up Walter McVitty Books, a tiny publishing company.

Walter and Lois were passionately dedicated to creating high-quality picture books and fiction for children, and this is what they did together for the next thirteen years, producing around sixty titles in all. Although they described Walter McVitty Books as a modest `flea circus' compared with the powerful multinational companies, their little enterprise achieved success and distinction, in Australia and overseas. By the time they chose to retire in 1998 Walter and Lois had unearthed a number of talented authors and illustrators (including John Marsden) and had given them their first start.
Unusual for small publishers, who almost always go broke and have to be rescued by one multinational or another (before being wiped out altogether), the cottage industry known as Walter McVitty Books flourished, without any assistance from bank managers or government grants.

How was it all done? In the second half of A Life in Children's Books, Walter McVitty describes in matter-of-fact language the day-to-day details of how he and Lois went about it.

But the Walter McVitty Books story was just one episode in a long life, and can only be understood through knowing what came before. What was it about Walter's life in those first five decades that led him, almost inexorably it might seem in hindsight, to becoming a publisher of children's books? Such things don't happen in a vacuum. And so in the first half of this book Walter McVitty describes his personal encounters over half a century with books, children and reading.

A Life in Children's Books is thus not an autobiography but one particular aspect of one particular person's complex and varied life - which is another story altogether.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Walter McVitty, born in Sunshine in Melbourne's west in 1934, survived an often violent Irish-Australian childhood similar to the one described in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashesto become, like McCourt, a teacher and, later, a school librarian. For fifteen years from 1969 he specialised in lecturing in Children's Literature at Melbourne Teachers College. During this period he became well known through his ABC radio talks and articles and reviews on aspects of children's literature and reading for Nation Review, The Ageand The Australian, as well as through countless articles in professional
journals in Australia and overseas. He is also the author of such books asInnocence and Experience(1981), Authors and Illustrators of Australian Children's Books (1989), a biography of Dorothy Wall; the Creator of Blinky Bill(1988) and numerous educational publications.


In 1985, with his wife Lois, he began a new career when he set up his own company, Walter McVitty Books, to publish children's books. Through staying small and selective, accepting only quality writing and illustration, and aiming for high editorial, design and production standards, their venture flourished. Achievements include the publishing of John Marsden's first book, So Much To Tell You, and the discovery of highly talented artists such as Margaret Early and John Lennox (illustrator of the deluxe Walter McVitty Centennial Edition of Seven Little Australians). Their books won design and
literary awards in Australia and overseas and Walter McVitty Books titles were published in fourteen different languages around the world.


In 1995 Walter's work was recognised when he was appointed Member of the Order of Australia 'for service to the arts, particularly as an educator and publisher of children's literature'. In 1998 the Children's Book Council awarded him the Nan Chauncy Medal 'for outstanding contribution to children's literature in Australia'.


He sold Walter McVitty Books to Lothian Books in 1998 and is now retired. After spending eight years living in Sydney and eleven more in Queensland, Walter and Lois have recently returned to Victoria to be closer to their families - especially their seven grandchildren.

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