Author: Mandy Hager

Mandy Hager is a New Zealand novelist, educator, and screenwriter best known for fiction that treats young readers as capable of engaging with ethical and environmental questions. Her books include standalone novels and the Blood of the Lamb trilogy, and her teaching has supported emerging writers as well as her own practice. Singing Home the Whale was published by Random House New Zealand in 2014. The teen novel follows Will Jackson, an isolated teenager who discovers a young orca separated from its pod and tries to protect it. Hager builds the relationship through sound, music, and careful observation while setting Will’s private commitment against family and community pressures. The novel received the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year and its young-reader category award in 2015, then became an IBBY Honour Book in 2016. Its recognition reflects the way Hager combines an accessible friendship story with questions about conservation, belonging, and responsibility toward another species. The result is both distinctly coastal and broadly humane.