Book description
In the world of New Zealand children's books, the name Joy Cowley
engenders enormous respect and affection. She has published dozens and
dozens of children's trade books of all kinds, such as the Mrs Wishy
Washy series, the award-winning Shadrach trilogy and Hunter. And she has
written literally hundreds of readers for the international educational
book market. She is constantly in demand as a guest performer and
speaker all over the world, but particularly in the US. Joy has also
written a tantalisingly small number of very fine adult novels,
beginning with Nest in a Falling Tree in the 1970s and including Classic
Music and Holy Days, both published by Penguin in the early 1990s. Joy
also has an additional dimension. She is an intensely thoughtful and
spiritual person, who writes and practises what she preaches and owns a
lodge/retreat centre at Fish Bay in the Marlborough Sounds created by
Joy and her husband Terry. Navigation is a relaxed, beautifully written
memoir, not in any sense a formal autobiography. It contains wonderful
sections on Joy's life growing up in a small Manawatu town (her first
job on leaving school was as a pharmacy assistant in Foxton), her family
life and her exploration of the joys of writing. It touches down
constantly at Fish Bay in the Sounds, where Joy writes passionately
about the landscape, the seasons and the natural world around her.
