Reviews: Bumper Batch of Nature Books

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We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: children’s publishing on Aotearoa’s natural world is flourishing. Linda Jane Keegan reviews a stack of the latest in wildlife books, including a healthy dose of bird books. She also highlights a couple of nature books aimed at adults but would not be amiss in the hands of our rangatahi.

Ruru: Night Hunter, by Katie Furze & Ned Barraud (Scholastic NZ)

Ruru is the second collaboration between Katie Furze and Ned Barraud, following Tuatara, which is shortlisted in the NZCYA Book Awards.

I love Ruru for the same reasons I loved Tuatara—the poetic voice interspersed with facts, awesome illustration, and the dynamism of the page. Furze has deftly narrated the nocturnal comings and goings of the ruru, neatly juxtaposed against a child going to sleep and waking up. Even if you skipped over the information tabs, the story covers the nesting, calls, diet, habitat, and threats of our native owl. More information about them is in the back.

Barraud’s illustrations are exactly what we love about his work: descriptive and realistic, and this time focusing on colours that suit the book’s nighttime setting. A mix of full-colour pages and images on white backgrounds gives the right amount of variety to keep the spreads visually interesting. The layout of text is also expertly weaved onto the page, where intermittent use of scattered or shaped text is both aesthetically pleasing and a cue for reading aloud with pauses and expression. It’s no surprise to see the designer, Vida Kelly, shortlisted for multiple titles in the PANZ Book Design Awards.

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Ten Nosey Weka, by Kate Preece & Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Bateman Books)

Kate Preece’s first book, One Weka Went Walking, features various Chatham Islands birds, and this time she focuses in on weka. Ten, to be precise, and the book prides itself on being the first counting book to use ta rē Moriori, the language of the original inhabitants of Rēkohu / Wharekauri / Chatham Islands.

In fact, it’s a trilingual affair, with rhyming verse in English, and the numbers from 10 to one in ta rē Moriori, te reo Māori, and English. Ten Nosey Weka was produced in consultation with the Hokotehi Moriori Trust, and reo Māori proofed by Justin Kereama. What a delight to celebrate two indigenous languages from the islands of our nation in such a beautiful book. Preece said, “‘I wrote this book for my children, and for those who call Rēkohu home. My husband grew up not knowing how to count to 10 in the language of his karāpuna (ancestors/tīpuna), and I wanted things to be different for our children.

The story takes the format of Five Little Ducks, where we start out with ten nosey weka and lose them one by one to their curious antics. The rhyme flows easily and each verse introduces a new word in ta rē Moriori, with its Māori and English counterparts shown at the bottom of the page. Preece cleverly alliterates the new word, which I found especially astute for the ‘ng’ sound—‘When she gnawed on ngana’.

Te Aho-White’s illustrations are light and fun. With a watercolour-style flair she captures the inquisitive nature of the weka in softly executed backgrounds, all in a lovely earthy palette. Birds and other animals are subtly incorporated into each scene, which a page at the end of the book encourages the reader to not only find, but say their answer in ta rē Moriori and te reo Māori. This is followed by a glossary of all the words and ten weka facts.

It’s so exciting to see the inclusion of the Moriori language in a picture book, and a perfect way to introduce young readers to a people—and culture—who are very much still around.

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Buzzz! Donovan Bixley’s Native Bugs of Aotearoa, by Donovan Bixley (Hachette)

We are on a roll here, with book creators putting out multiple fantastic titles on a theme. Donovan Bixley’s Buzzz! joins Squawk! and Rustle! as the invertebrate edition of his non-fiction nature series aimed at younger readers.

What I love about all three of these books is how Bixley has taken factual material and reproduced it in a fun and accessible way for children (and children-at-heart). The language is light, engaging, and the use of speech bubbles and sections of text in offset colours. Like the other two books, Rustle! Includes a distribution map and size comparison—this time comparing each species to a New Zealand $2 coin (in Squawk! it’s a milk bottle and in Rustle! it’s a house).

There is no introduction in Buzzz!; after the contents and title page it launches straight into the different species, each one represented on a two-page spread. This is fine except for the nitpicker and pedant the word ‘bugs’ is a funny term that has both a common usage encompassing all things creepy and crawly, and a scientific definition which encompasses insects from the order Hemiptera. I think this is useful to know, though I fully support acceptance of common usage. In saying that, maybe this book doesn’t need that information and I am just a nerd with an entomological agenda, but I don’t think there’s any harm in kids knowing the word ‘Hemiptera’.

The book covers Aotearoa’s favourite and weirdest invertebrates, including wētā, pūrātoke, kapowai, giant snails and earthworms, and pepetuna. It’s a delightful introduction to our native invertebrates with illustrations that accurately capture what these creatures look like while also giving them fun googly eyes (sometimes with sunglasses). It’s a win-win.

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The Proud Pūteketeke, by Peter Millett & Fifi Colston (Penguin Random House)

The Proud Pūteketeke is a retelling of The Ugly Duckling, in honour of the pūteketeke’s rise to fame as Bird of the Century following British television host John Oliver’s backing in the Forest & Bird campaign.

Written in prose, the story takes us from the chick that doesn’t look or behave like their siblings through their journey to find out who they are. It makes for a nice metaphor, but also showcases the features, habits, and diet of the pūteketeke. Peter Millett doesn’t miss an opportunity for humour and since pūteketeke have a penchant for puking (read the book to find out why!), and children will delight in the taunts from the ducklings—Chucky Ducky, Chunder Wonder, and Pukey Sukie.

Fifi Colston’s illustrations are wonderfully detailed and textured. For the most part they show what we are reading in the text, but hidden throughout the pages is the life cycle of a damselfly. It’s a nice addition which isn’t referenced anywhere in the text, which on the one hand I like, but on the other hand feels like a missed opportunity to show the difference between a damselfly and a dragonfly, as I suspect many readers may confuse it for the latter. Although to be fair it’s a book about grebes and not about insects, so it’s more an observation than a criticism.

One thing that did sort of bother me was the suggested phonetic pronunciation of pūteketeke. The back of the book has some additional information about the bird, but saying ‘poo-tecky-tecky’ feels a bit off the mark. Maybe I’m quibbling, but I would think that something like ‘poo-teh-keh-teh-keh’ would have been closer, and encourage recognising the Māori e as an ‘eh’ (as in ‘meh’) sound.

Overall, I really enjoyed this pukapuka and especially love seeing a bird book about a species that a lot of people are probably less familiar with.

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Five Wee Pūteketeke, by Nicola Toki & Jo Pearson (Allen & Unwin)

Officially backed by Forest & Bird—and, ostensibly, John Oliver—Five Wee Pūteketeke is a Five Little Ducks retelling, with pūteketeke facts tucked into the illustrations.

I have to confess that my first impression of the book is based on trying to read it aloud in the singsong cadence of the original rhyme. This doesn’t really work when ‘pūteketeke’ has five syllables and ‘duck’ has one. So that really coloured my first reading because from purely a scansion in verse perspective, ‘Five wee ducks went swimming one day’ flows rather more smoothly than ‘Five wee pūteketeke went swimming one day’. But I appreciate the commitment to using the reo Māori name for the grebe, and if you go into it without trying to fit it into a tune designed for fewer syllables, you’ll be away laughing.

Although I felt some of the lines didn’t meet the quality of the rest of the text, I loved how each iteration of the verse introduced a pūteketeke behaviour and was supported by the illustrations and the information incorporated into them. It was also nice to see reo Māori woven into the verses.

I loved the aesthetic of the illustrations. Jo Pearson uses a clean style with block colours for the birds and softer edges and textures for the scenery and background. I’m also biased towards matte paper stock, which I think also works well with the art style. There are full-colour spreads and pages with a blob of water hinting at what fate may have befallen each chick. But fear not—spoiler alert—the chicks are found safe and sound at the end.

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Miro: The Little Brown Kiwi, by Kelly Lynch (Bateman Books)

Miro is a photographic journey of a day in the life of a North Island brown kiwi. Kelly Lynch both wrote and photographed for the book, and the result is like a photo album of kiwi habitat, diet, activity, and threats.

This book is longer than a lot of children’s bird books, which allows Lynch to write narratively as well as descriptively and include a lot of information in an engaging text. Writing about a specific kiwi with a name lends a sense of character and appreciation for kiwi, and Miro’s place as an individual bird. The language evokes the senses in terms of sounds, smells and textures in a kiwi’s environment; it’s poetic in places without being overly flowery or unnecessarily verbose.

The number of different photographs belies the difficulty of capturing images of kiwi, although the quality of some photos is better than others. The design of the book is simple and clear, although I wasn’t keen on the cartoon-style illustrations at the corners of the text pages; I felt they didn’t really match the tone of the rest of the book.

I think the book is suited to upper primary readers and any kids who love kiwi. In a classroom I imagine it working well as an example of writing a narrative that accompanies an image.

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After Dark: Nocturnal Forest Creatures of Aotearoa, by Julia Crouth (Scholastic NZ)

This revised edition of After Dark celebrates the book’s 20th anniversary and is well-placed among its contemporaries. After an introductory verse, each right-hand page has a four-verse rhyme describing a nocturnal creature, which is revealed on the following page.

It’s a classic ‘guess who’ style book, and plenty of facts are woven into the clues. It’s a shame, then, that even being a revised edition some of these ‘facts’ are not accurate. The tuatara is referred to as a lizard (they are actually in their own group, Rhynchocephalia, as Katie Furze’s Tuatara will tell you!), and the bat is described as using sonar, which is not quite the same as echolocation. Further, the pekapeka featured is described as foraging on the ground, which is true of the short-tailed bat, but not so much of the long-tailed bat. It might have been a useful to add a note of which species somewhere.

In sharing aloud, the rhymes don’t scan perfectly but read smoothly enough, and the words use just enough interesting vocabulary without overwhelming the reader. The illustrations are richly textured, and each full-page image is an artwork it its own right. The updated cover has a more modern look with cleaner typefaces and a change of image from the well-known kiwi to the enigmatic kākāpō.

Although the factual inaccuracies do let it down, it’s a good-looking book with a fun concept that is still enjoyable on re-reads.

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Six-Legged Ghosts: The insects of Aotearoa, by Lily Duval (Canterbury University Press)

This is not specifically a children’s book and is definitely aimed at an adult audience, but it is too good not to mention. It was released earlier in the year, and is not only an incredible homage to the array of insect species that Aotearoa has, but a considered acknowledgement of European approaches to sciences and traditional ecological knowledge. It may appear a hefty tome but the language and author voice make this an engaging and enlightening read. It definitely has a place in high schools, and with any advanced child readers interested in insects. Lily Duval, who illustrated Nicola Toki’s Critters of Aotearoa, adeptly renders images of the insects in watercolour and they make for a stunning accompaniment to the text.

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Coastal Fishes of New Zealand, by Malcolm Francis (Potton & Burton)

This is another general audience title but perfect for fish-loving whānau and to bolster the knowledge of anyone with a special interest in identifying fish. In the same way that I think many good children’s books are suitable for adults, many adult books are suitable for children if they are interested. Similarly laid out to The New Zealand Seashore Guide, this identification book is clear and concise, and every species has a colour photograph. A great book for the home, bach, or classroom.

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