By Betsy Ochester and Dawn McMillan, illustrated by Ross Kinnaird With school holidays beginning this week, we bring you a Sampling from Betsy Ochester, Dawn McMillan and Ross Kinnaird’s spinoff from the ever-popular I Need a New Bum books! And…
Kay Benseman shares insights on picture books featuring library books, giants, new babies and crabs. But Then… The Almost True Story of an Overdue Book, by Swapna Haddow, illustrated by Daron Parton This ‘almost true story’ is hilarious and delightful….
Fiona Giles reviews four books which cover learning numbers with tūī, sharing new words with siblings, a creative retelling of a fairytale featuring tardigrades, and a Ferrari-inspired story about dreaming big. Annelies Judson reviews the fifth: the latest in Dawn…
Christmas books go out from the library at any of time of the year (well at least they do in Tākaka), but obviously Christmas time is the best time for diving into these festive reads. Linda Jane Keegan reviews the…
Join Leila Austin on a magical journey through the New Zealand forest, farting your way through a running race, classic cat dramas, and a newly uncovered piece of Aotearoa’s literary history as she reviews four new picture books. Lost in…
Chances are if you’ve had a young reader in your life in the past decade or so, you’ll have a Dawn McMillan book or two somewhere on your bookshelves. Does I Need A New Bum! ring any bells? Or perhaps…
Home Child, based on child migrant Pat Brown’s early life, is such a major change of pace, a poignant, heart-wrenching story by a writer so well known for her hugely successful funny rhyming books like I Need a New Bum,…
Early Childhood teacher Sara Croft reviews four New Zealand picture books. Two take us on the sea, and the other two feature a plethora of hilarious birds. There’s a Tui in our Teapot – he tūī kei rō tīpāta, by…
There are some hilarious picture books out for the Christmas market this year, so we thought we might give you a chuckle with some of the funny pages. We have spreads of Stink-o-Saurus, by Deano Yipadee and Paul Beavis (Scholastic…
Anzac Day brings with it a fever pitch of publishing of war books for both children and adults. This has been especially true during the centenary commemorations of World War I. People are horrified by war, but also fascinated, and…