You know it, you love it – it’s the Mahy Questionnaire! This month we are featuring the prolific Donovan Bixley. Bixley, along with Darryn Joseph and Keri Opai was shortlisted for the Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award for…
You know it, you love it – it’s the Mahy Questionnaire! This month we are very lucky to be able to feature Lani Wendt Young, who as we publish this piece, is on the Storylines Story Tour in Auckland. Lani…
You know it, you love it – it’s the Mahy Questionnaire! This month, we delve into the world of the author-illustrator with Terry Fitzgibbon. Terry illustrates his own stories and those of others, with his most recent picture book Coo-Coo…
For the third instalment of our shiny new Mahy Questionnaire, we thought we had better select an author who has a career in books in common with Mahy. Gareth Ward aka. The Great Wardini of Wardini Books also has a…
For the second instalment of our shiny new Mahy Questionnaire, we thought we had better select an author who we knew would construct some brilliant answers. So we went to none other than famed Roadworks author Sally Sutton. Sally’s latest…
The Sapling had been thinking for some time about how best to honour the late, great Margaret Mahy. Suddenly it hit us: A Questionnaire, along the lines of the NZ Book Council’s Mansfield Questionnaire, and the Proust Questionnaire. So we…
Hearing the wonderful news that six more towns are going to be Refugee Resettlement centres, we got thinking about what books might provide the best and friendliest introduction to a new life in Aotearoa New Zealand. Here’s our starting list…
Over Summer, my nephews and I read some recently published te reo Māori and bilingual children’s books. Nō Tauranga Moana rāua, Te Kaponga and Mangō-Ururoa are almost 10 and 7 years old respectively and te reo Māori is their first…
The images and the story of Margaret Mahy’s “A Lion in the Meadow” have almost become a part of the collective consciousness of children who grow up in Aotearoa. This year, the Māori language translation of the book: “He Raiona…
Ko ngā pikitia me ngā kōrero o Lion in the Meadow nā Margaret Mahy, he mea tuhi ki te rae o te tamaiti i tipu ake i Aotearoa nei. I tēnei tau, i puta mai ki te ao He Raiona…