Over the past decade, Kiwi illustrator Richard Fairgray has moved from self-publishing comic books, to picture books, to being picked up internationally. He is published in New Zealand by Puffin and Scholastic NZ. Richard Fairgray is a comic book artist…
Today, Release, a new YA novel by Patrick Ness, hits the shelves of New Zealand bookshops. We asked a Wellington-based book club – adults who read a lot of YA, and fans of Ness’s previous work – to get together…
Penny Scown, the Senior Editor at Scholastic NZ, takes us behind the scenes in the publishing process of Tāwhirimātea, A Song for Matariki, a new dual-language picture book (with CD) by June Pitman-Hayes, Kat Merewether and Ngaere Roberts. This story…
This month, our illustrator takes on generational politics and the housing crisis, and comes up with a viable scapegoat …
Soon after the 2015 banning controversy in New Zealand, Into the River was purchased by US publisher Polis Books, and will be released in paperback in the US this month. We had YA writer and renowned American book critic Michael…
An excerpt from James Norcliffe’s Twice Upon a Time, a Junior Fiction novel about Ginny’s search for her Pop. It is full of quirky, inventive characters, chief among them Digger Dagger, whom Ginny encounters for the second time below.
Nina Powles remembers the thrill of being scared by stories as a child, and not quite believing in ghosts but not not believing either … Remember Scooby Doo, I Spy, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and Goosebumps? I spy a…
Two of New Zealand’s best writers sat down for a chat recently. Here’s poet, essayist and editor Ashleigh Young’s write-up about her meeting with children’s writer Jack Lasenby. FROM THE DESK OF Ashleigh Young 7 Sturgess Tce Te Kuiti Xmas…
Poet and teacher Rachel O’Neill interviews author and storyteller Ivan Coyote ahead of their appearance this May in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Coyote will be at the Schools Days at the Auckland Writers Festival. Their latest book, Tomboy Survival Guide,…
Poet Hannah Mettner considers two international books aimed at inspiring a love of poetry in young readers. Like many other New Zealanders of my generation, I grew up with a hard-cover copy of Poems to Read to Young New Zealanders….