Book Reviews: Five Aotearoa Non-Fiction Books

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The environment, conservation, and an Olympic athlete feature in five of Aotearoa’s newest non-fiction books, as lead editor Linda Jane Keegan tells us in this latest batch of reviews.

Sylvia and the Birds by Johanna Emeney and Sarah Laing

Sylvia and the Birds is an illustrated and photographic biography of Sylvia Durrant, aka The Bird Lady, as well as a conservation guide and activity book. Its format is annual-style; mixing up the storytelling in comics and prose, in between fact pages and banter between two kererū who are part narrators, part audience to the story itself.

Initially I wasn’t sure how I felt about the combination of photos and illustrations, but I’m so pleased they were included. The historical images especially give a sense of the era that Sylvia was brought up in and contemporary photos provide an additional level of detail to complement Sarah’s artwork.

It’s a stunning book. The production is excellent; the hardback cover gives both the book and its subject the gravity they deserve, and the matte paper stock is pleasing to the eye and thumb.

The historical images especially give a sense of the era that Sylvia was brought up in and contemporary photos provide an additional level of detail to complement Sarah’s artwork

I must confess that despite being somewhat of a bird nerd myself, I hadn’t heard of Sylvia Durrant before the release of this book. Fortunately, you can enjoy her story with no prior knowledge; the book covers her childhood and her various vocations before turning her focus to bird life. It is both heart-wrenching and captivating.

We also get to meet Charlie, who at one time volunteered with Sylvia and goes on to other conservation adventures. I loved the way Charlie’s pronouns were included so casually.

The activities in the back have you matching up baby birds to their adults, working out which types of beaks are for which types of food, setting up feeding stations, and more. It’s a wonderful book for an independent reader or the whole family to enjoy. I cannot recommend it more highly!

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Get Outdoors: Brilliant Boredom Busters for Kiwi Kids by Paul Adamson

Get Outdoors is an attractively presented selection of activities designed to get kids doing stuff outside. It covers a range of activity types, from art to building to gardening to cooking, as well as the expected swimming/biking/tramping fare.

The projects vary in the level of skill required to undertake them. Budding outdoors people can start out simple with paper planes or chalking the driveway or exploring rockpools, or challenge themselves to build a bivvy, rocket, or fort. A number of the ideas in the book do require significant resources, skills, and adult help or supervision, such as building a tree fort. However, safety is always addressed.

The book covers a range of activity types, from art to building to gardening to cooking, as well as the expected swimming/biking/tramping fare

I am all for empowering kids to take on projects like this but the DIY aspect of some of the suggestions felt a bit out of a place in a book selling itself as boredom busters for kids. On the one hand I love that the book assumes capability on the part of the child, but on the other hand I imagine bored kids whose adults at home, by necessity, aren’t available to provide support or resources, and how that might be disappointing. 

I would have liked to see more detail in some areas, such as how important it is to clean sugar water feeders if you put them in your garden, more about different leaf shapes and their names, or ongaonga being a native plant favourite of red admiral butterflies. That being said, I felt like many of the options had a science angle but not explicitly – you know, when kids are learning about physics or ecology and they don’t even realise it.

Budding outdoors-people can start out simple with paper planes or chalking the driveway or exploring rockpools, or challenge themselves to build a bivvy, rocket, or fort

Get Outdoors is an attractively presented book with loads of great ideas and does cater to varying skill levels. It received a Storylines Notable Book Award this year and is jampacked full of inspiration for kids who want to get busy doing stuff but need some ideas.

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Emma: Emma Twigg’s Incredible Journey to Olympic Gold by Jessica Lawry

Emma is the inspirational true story of a rower who worked hard to achieve her goals. She qualified for and competed in not one but four sets of Olympic Games.

I know Emma must have felt a lot of disappointment in missing out on medals in the first three Olympics, but in a narrative sense, I found it very pleasing that despite working very hard you don’t always win. In that sense, when she finally does win, it is all the more satisfying. However, I found some of the losses a bit abrupt, and thought that there could have been a bit more build-up to ramp up the disappointment on each count.

In a narrative sense I found it very pleasing that despite working very hard, you don’t always win

I love how the illustrations combine a scrapbook, photo-style images, and full-spread illustrations. Emma’s focus, determination, effort, disappointment and joy are all captured in pictures of her training and competing. I especially like a boxed close-up of just her eyes.

The overall structure of the story works really well but, on a line-to-line level, I think it could have been more succinct. That being said, much of the language beautifully evokes the feeling of a place or scene-

On crisp mornings at Lake Karāpiro, there would be Emma, quietly gliding through the water.

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… the coaching boat motor hummed alongside her, sometimes muffled by the fresh morning fog, and on other days silenced by the sound of heavy rain.

In a world where media tends to focus on men in sports, Jessica has captured an important story and I’m delighted to see a woman in sport celebrated in a book for children.

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Weather and Climate New Zealand by Sandra Carrod and Karsten Schneider

Weather and Climate is the most recent title in The NZ Series and was highly commended in the Storylines Notable Book Awards. 

Like its predecessors, Weather and Climate does what it says on the box; it provides an understanding of the weather and climate in Aotearoa New Zealand specifically. It has the look and feel of a school textbook, which makes it not only ideal for school use but for readers who prefer a strictly scientific telling rather than something Horrible Histories or Magic School Bus-esque (no shade on the Bus or The Friz, they are wonderful for a different but also overlapping type of audience!).

The book starts with the bigger picture of climate effects – the Coriolis effect, greenhouse effect, atmospheric cells – and then works its way closer to the Earth, through ozone, carbon cycles and weather systems.

It has the look and feel of a school textbook, which makes it not only ideal for school use but for readers who prefer a strictly scientific telling

The design is tidy and consistent with the other books in the series. I found some of the diagrams to be a bit text-heavy or busy, which for me made it hard to know where to look first. Others had labels with a clear order to follow. Fact boxes and photos also accompany the text.

Although possibly a bit dry for some, Weather and Climate is a really good primer on climate and its drivers. It has a climate crisis section too, but climate change is well-addressed throughout the book. The book concludes with actions you can take, as well as actions the government can take to reduce emissions.

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Inside Bubble Earth: Recycling by Des Hunt

Look, I’m not sure whether Des and/or OneTree House took heed of my comments on the Climate Change edition of Inside Bubble Earth, but Recycling is much cleaner and less graphically overwhelming than its sibling. (I still want the author’s name not to be underlined on the cover though, please? I know I’m a pedant.)

Before I continue, I want to say how pleased I was to see the use of the term “human-made” (as opposed to “man-made”) used without fanfare in the text. It is refreshing to see this language normalised.

The introduction takes us to an archaeological site in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. It feels like a tenuous link between the abandoned site and a child’s abandoned birthday party mess in order to introduce the idea of plastic waste, but it somehow sort of works.

I want to say how pleased I was to see the use of the term “human-made” (as opposed to “man-made”) used without fanfare in the text

The rest of the book has the same easy-to-read and digestible style of the Climate Change one; the explanations are simple and clear without being patronising. The writing is engaging and feels like a guided tour through plastics production and the processes involved.

The explanations are simple and clear without being patronising

Words in bold throughout the book appear in a glossary at the back, but I didn’t like how when they were used in the plural form the ‘s’ was not bolded like the rest of the word. This is a typesetting choice I can’t get behind.

Recycling, like Weather and Climate, also suggests ways you can take action for the good of the planet, though I would have liked it to address the idea of greenwashing and the pitfalls of ideas like using paper bags instead of plastic if you’re still only going to use them once.