Review: The Mess of our Lives
Elizabeth Heritage reviews Mary-Anne Scott’s latest novel for teens. We have rats in our house but it’s on purpose, as pets. In The Mess of our Lives, the new YA novel by Mary-anne Scott, there are rats in the house…
Elizabeth Heritage
Disability Literati: on representation of disability in children’s books
Bee Trudgeon attended the ‘Disability Literati’ session at Verb Wellington, to learn more about how children and young people are portrayed in literature and a perceived historical tendency for disabled children to be treated as ‘life lessons, plucky objects of…
Review: New YA from Mandy Hager—Gracehopper
Mandy Hager’s latest young adult novel is a family drama bringing together issues of care work, disability, and identity. Elizabeth Heritage reviews. Gracehopper is Mandy Hager’s new YA novel about Grace Murphy, a Taiwanese 18-year-old living in Wellington with her…
Gender (im)balance in NZ children’s books
Elizabeth Heritage investigates representations of gender in New Zealand children’s book publishing by looking at the 2017 bestsellers and talking to local publishers. Are we doing the best by all genders, and why does it matter? The Observer recently commissioned…
Hairy Maclary: ‘The Books Lead the Way’
The twenty-first title in the Hairy Maclary and Friends series is coming out in October 2017, and we thought that this made it the perfect time to get Elizabeth Heritage to have a talk to Lynley Dodd, and many of…