Books By Jack Lasenby - Author

Jack Lasenby is one of our finest writers for children. 'Perhaps the most innately New Zealand writer of all New Zealand writers for children,' according to Margaret Mahy (NZ Listener). He writes of heartland New Zealand - small towns, farms, and the bush, of the Depression era, as well as futuristic novels of great depth. He's 'observant, erudite, witty and often caustic'. His novels inspired Judith Holloway to rank him with Margaret Mahy and Maurice Gee as 'children's writers whose themes, originality and sheer literariness makes them almost as important and entertaining to adults' (NZ Books). John Marsden wrote of Lasenby's post-apocalypse title Because We Were the Travellers, that it was, 'Intense, vivid, poetic - a cruel and beautiful book.' Jack Lasenby was born in Waharoa, New Zealand in 1931. During the 1950s he was a deer-culler and possum trapper in the Ureweras. He's a former school teacher, lecturer in English at the Wellington Teachers' College, and editor of the School Journal.