Muzaffer İzgü: Turkey Author

A society that has no child reader, does not have adult readers; the reader will be trained and so will gain the habit of reading.

Muzaffer İzgü

Muzaffer İzgü was born on October 29, 1933 in poverty in Adana, Turkey; in his own words he was a "working all the time" child. He worked at various jobs including washing dishes, waiting on tables, and selling lemonade, while going to school. His childhood experiences encouraged him to desire a teaching career. He graduated from Diyarbakir Primary Teacher Training School and worked as a classroom teacher for many years. Eventually, he became a teacher at a middle school.

In 1959 he began his writing career by writing adult-oriented short stories and essays. In the 1970s, he began writing children's books, and in recent years has written exclusively for children. He is a prolific writer, having produced 113 works, 68 of which are children's books.

Muzaffer Izgü feels a heavy responsibility in writing books for children. For Izgü children's literature serves as a bridge to adult literature and must be written carefully in order to build a life-long love of literature and reading. The role of language and humor are key elements in his work. The choice of words, the title, the length of sentences, and the size and length of paragraphs are important elements that make a text understandable and appealing to children. Moreover, humor is seen as a way to facilitate learning as well as a way to engage children in reading.

While humor is important, Izgü does not discount realism. He believes that the subject of a child's book should reflect the reality of society. In Flew, Flew, Ali Flew Away (2000), he discusses the phenomenon of Turkish workers migrating to Europe to find work. The boy Ali is left behind with his grandmother, and the story tells of his emotional pain and his yearning for his mother. He blames the Germans for taking his parents away from him.

Between 1977 and 1997, Muzzaffer Izgü received several awards for his work. These include the Turkish Language Society Tale Award, the Istanbul International Children Books Fair championship award, the Bulgaria Gold Porcupine Award, and the TÖMER (Turkish Teaching Center) Most Successful Children's Books Competition second place award.