Central Otago children's author Jillian Sullivan started the session on Saturday by recounting writing to Mahy as a new writer struggling to break through, only for the accomplished author to buy and post back to her a book containing the details of every publisher in New Zealand.
"She was very kind that way," Sullivan told the audience, before she read Mahy's debut book, A Lion in the Meadow, published in 1969.
Event organiser and children's librarian Bridget Jopson read Down the Back of the Chair, followed by librarian Sooze Jarman, who read Bubble Trouble.
Mahy died in Christchurch in July, aged 76, after being diagnosed with cancer in April.
A resident of Governors Bay on Lyttelton Harbour, she was awarded the Order of New Zealand in 1993.
She won the Carnegie Medal in 1982 for The Haunting and again in 1984 for The Changeover, making her the first writer outside the United Kingdom to receive the award.
In 2006, she was awarded the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing and her books have been translated into multiple languages.
A bronze bust of Mahy was unveiled outside the Christchurch Arts Centre in 2009.
