Features

Book Quiz: New Zealand’s Heroes and Heroines

New Zealand’s legends inspire our tamariki to believe that the sky is the limit. How much do you know about these biographies targeted at children and their kiwi connections? Test yourself, share with a friend, and let us know on…

Book Awards: Best First Book Authors Tell All!

How does an author not only get their book published, but get their book shortlisted for the Best First Book award? We asked each of this year’s finalists how they went from unpublished amateur to finalist. Eileen Merriman, finalist for…

From the Lake District to Mangere Island

Kura Rutherford ruminates on how powerfully children’s books can evoke geographies both unknown and familiar, from Beatrix Potter’s Lake District to the isolation of Mangere Island. Sometimes a walk around a lake means walking into a book. When my family…

LGBTQI+ Book List: See Us, Hear Us, Validate Us

Today Emmett Roberts, a consent educator, library studies student, and intern with InsideOUT, reflects on what kinds of books young people in the LGBTIQ+ community – and beyond it – need, and gives us some recommendations to check out, from…

School Librarians of Aotearoa: Senga White

Senga White is the Research and Learning Coordinator at Southland Boys’ High School in Invercargill. She has been a school librarian for over a decade. I absolutely love working in school libraries! This profession has become the perfect intersection of…

The Giselle Clarkson Comic: Number 15

As part of our coverage for this year’s NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, we asked illustrator and major book-lover Giselle Clarkson to undertake the mammoth task of reviewing all five Picture Book Award finalists, with the help…

The Reckoning: The colour of culture

Children’s book author and designer Vasanti Unka reckons that we could do better with our use of the colours from our multicultural surrounds. We have the world at our fingertips – so why aren’t we using it? Vasanti’s new book…

Book Awards: The Non-fiction Finalists

As part of our coverage of this year’s NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, we’ve asked the publishers of the non-fiction finalists to explain why that manuscript, that idea caught their imaginations. Their responses are compelling and passionate,…

Book Quiz: The 2018 children's book awards

This year’s NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults winners will be announced on 8 August. Before that, we thought we’d test your knowledge of the shortlisted books. Each answer is the title of one of this year’s finalists. Good luck! Answers…