Michael Brown

Michael Brown is a children's book author whose work has sparked the imaginations of hundreds of thousands of young readers across Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. His books are funny, tender, occasionally frightening, and always honest — qualities that children respond to immediately and that adults find quietly moving. Michael writes with the authority of someone who has spent years in actual classrooms watching actual children read, and that lived knowledge gives his stories a texture and emotional intelligence that sets them apart from the crowded field of contemporary children's literature.

Eight Years in the Classroom

Before he became a published author, Michael spent eight years teaching primary school in Sydney's western suburbs — one of the most socioeconomically diverse parts of the city. He taught Year 3 through Year 6 across three different schools, and those years were formative in ways that shaped not just what he writes about but how he thinks about children as readers. He observed which books made reluctant readers forget they were supposed to dislike reading. He noticed the stories that generated spontaneous conversation at lunchtime, the ones that prompted children to bring in drawings they had made at home. He learned that children do not want to be protected from difficulty — they want to be accompanied through it, with honesty and warmth.

Books That Reach Young Readers Where They Are

Michael's debut picture book, published in 2020, won the Children's Choice Award in 2022 and has sold over 150,000 copies. His subsequent chapter book series — aimed at readers aged seven to ten — has been praised by teachers and school librarians across Australia for its diverse cast of characters, its handling of themes like anxiety, friendship conflict, and family change, and its refusal to tie every story up in a tidy resolution. A fourth book in the series is due in 2025. His Best Illustrated Book award in 2021 recognised a standalone picture book he created in collaboration with an Indigenous Australian illustrator — a project he describes as among the most meaningful of his career.

School Visits and Regional Outreach

Michael visits schools and public libraries throughout the year, with a particular commitment to regional and remote communities where access to authors is limited. He has travelled to schools in the Northern Territory, outback Queensland, and rural Western Australia through the Australian government's Authors in Schools programme. He runs creative writing workshops for children aged six to twelve, and a significant number of his workshop participants have gone on to enter — and win — state and national young writers' competitions. Michael believes that the child who falls in love with a book at age eight becomes the adult who thinks more carefully, argues more clearly, and feels more generously toward people unlike themselves.