John Marsden was one of Australia's greatest writers of children's and young adult literature. Photo: ABC Central Victoria: Larissa Romensky
Acclaimed Australian author John Marsden, whose young adult novels were read and beloved across the world, has died aged 74.
Marsden wrote the internationally best-selling Tomorrow book series, which sold millions of copies and was adapted for film and television.
He won many major awards for children's and adult fiction, and in 2006 received the Lloyd O'Neil Award for contributions to Australian publishing.
Following the news of his death, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Marsden "wanted young Australians to read more and his writing made that happen".
"Vivid, funny, quintessentially Australian, he wrote with a real love for our land and a true sense of our people's character," Albanese wrote on social media.
"John's work will live long in our national memory."
Marsden's 1993 novel Tomorrow, When the War Began, about a hypothetical war where Australia is invaded, made him one of Australia's most renowned young adult novelists.
His popularity and acclaim spanned to the United States, where Tomorrow, Where the War Began featured on the American Library Association's (ALA) "Best Books for Young Adults" list in 1996. In 2000, the ALA named the book at number 41 on its list of "100 Best Books for Teens" published between 1966 and 2000.
Pan Macmillan Australia, Marsden's publisher, labelled the Tomorrow books "the best series for Australian teens of all time".
In 2018, speaking about the books, Marsden told the ABC: "The characters have plenty of weaknesses … but I wanted teenagers to realise that doesn't mean you have no strengths".
"The Tomorrow series, I hope, is giving young people the message that they are capable of great things," he said.
Australian author Alison Lester said Marsden had left an "enormous" legacy through the Tomorrow series.
"He would've got so many kids reading who would never have read otherwise, I think. Here was a whole world that they could believe in," she said.
"Those books, they looked like they were going to change the world, they were such a force.
"The kids [in the books] were so powerful … I think that was the most amazing thing."
His historical novel South of Darkness won the Christina Stead Award for best novel in 2015.
Marsden founded and served as principal at two schools in regional Victoria, Candlebark near Romsey and Alice Miller in Macedon.
"Running a school is probably the most intense and complicated job I've had in my life. The only thing I can compare it to is when I worked in the emergency department at Sydney Hospital when I was about 19," he told the ABC in 2018.
Of starting the school at Candelbark, which sits in bushland, he said: "It's very important that young people get their hands dirty, both literally and metaphorically - there's a lot of laughter. There's a lot of joking. There are a lot of serious conversations, too."
In a joint statement on Thursday evening Candlebark and Alice Miller said Marsden "transformed countless young lives through both his writing and his groundbreaking approach to education".
Sarita Ryan, the principal of the schools, said he was "a true champion of children and young people [who] had unflinching belief in them and viewed them with profound respect".
- ABC
