Cirrus@Austlit

Noreen Shelley spent her first three years in Lithgow. She grew up with a house full of books and began writing at the age of seven. Shelley completed her schooling at the Methodist Ladies College at Burwood and then went to Sydney Teachers College. She then taught in a primary school for four years and attended night classes at Julian Ashton Art School. Shelley was a junior lecturer in art at Sydney Teachers College for a short while and an art teacher at Abbotsleigh College. She then began writing and, for four years, lived at Woodford in the Blue Mountains.

Shelley began writing scripts for the ABC Kindergarten of the Air radio program and stories for the NSW School Magazine of which she was Editor 1960-1969. Her stories about the little pig Piggy Grunter first appeared in the School Magazine and in book form between 1944 and 1959. In addition to many other magazine and book publications, she also contributed nine titles to Longman's Australian People series in 1963. After her retirement in the late 1960s Shelley spent more than two years in England before returning to Australia at the end of 1971. From the early 1970s, she wrote a number of books for older readers, including the widely-admired and award winning Family at the Lookout (1972). She also adapted folk-tales for her last book Legends of the Gods : Strange and Fascinating Tales from Around the World (1976).

(Source: Adapted from 'Noreen Shelley' in Walter McVitty Authors & Illustrators of Australian Children's Books (1989): 203-204)