Belinda Hollyer obituary

Belinda Hollyer was born in New Zealand, where she worked as a teacher-librarian. She moved to London in the 1970s and found work in publishing, starting at the Macdonald group

My friend and former colleague Belinda Hollyer, who has died aged 70, was an author of children’s books and also worked extensively in publishing.

Belinda was born in Takapuna, New Zealand, to James and Dieudonnee Bracewell, who were both schoolteachers. After studying at university in Auckland and working as a teacher-librarian in various places around the North Island, she moved to London in the 1970s, finding a job in publishing with the Macdonald group.

From the mid-70s to the mid-80s she contributed as an author to the Macdonald Starters series – informational hardbacks for young children that were popular, collectable and commercially successful around the world. Words in the books were deliberately few, so had to be chosen with meticulous care if the whole was to make sense and to sound good when read aloud in the classroom. Belinda’s teaching and library experience helped her fulfil that brief. She also wrote several short biographical books for children, of characters such as Geronimo, Alexander the Great and Mary Kingsley.

Working on such projects at weekends, away from the demands of her normal editing work and office routine, Belinda gradually began to find that her scope for writing reduced as she progressed up the career ladder. She held two senior management jobs in the late 80s and early 90s, as managing director of Random House Children’s Books and then as head of Philips Media’s London office, both of which left little time for her writing. However, in 2002 she had her first full-length novel for children, A Long Walk to Lavender Street, published. Set in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1966, it followed the fortunes of 13-year old Siesie, a mixed-race child whose parents are forced to battle against official racism.

Several other novels for children followed, mostly exploring the themes of family and friendships among women and girls, and there were also poetry anthologies, including Haven’t You Grown! – Poems About Families, and She’s All That – Poems About Girls. Perhaps her most popular book was River Song, published in 2011, about a young Maori girl in New Zealand who is required to summon all her strength and spiritual power to protect her grandmother’s ancestral land.

Belinda’s wide interests also led her to write history books for children on subjects as disparate as slavery and women’s suffrage, and a book for adults on migraine (Mind Over Migraine, 1994).

After two marriages that ended in divorce (though she kept the surname of her first husband), in the early 80s Belinda met the literary agent Bruce Hunter, and they married in 2008 after 25 years together.

She is survived by Bruce, and by her sisters, Brenda and Jane.