Non-fiction

Book Quiz: Let’s see what you remember…

Did you see our books of the year?! To help you with your Christmas and end-of-year book shopping, we published our picks of the best YA Books, Factual Books, Junior and Middle Fiction, and Picture Books over the past week,…

Five of the Best Picture Books Featuring Kiwi

Of the hundreds of children’s books featuring our national bird, here are some all-stars that will help children and adults alike get to know these fascinating creatures better. One of my very favourite books when I was little – I…

2017 Christmas Shopping List: Factual Books

Do you want to be sure you’re getting top-shelf books for your favourite people this Christmas – or on any gift-giving occasion? We are making it easy for you! Here is our selection of the very best New Zealand books…

The Sampling: The New Zealand Art Activity Book

The New Zealand Art Activity Book is a 158-page activity book for children who love to draw, paint and otherwise express themselves. These spreads are of works from WH Hammond, Sylvia Siddell and Kerry-Ann Lee. Te Papa Press has allowed us to include PDF activity pages for two of them, plus a list of questions to start your activities based on Kerry-Ann Lee’s gorgeous spread.

Book Reviews: Journeys and Exploration

Each of these three new non-fiction titles presents fascinating information in an engaging and imaginative way. Coincidentally, they all deal with themes of journeys and/or exploration. Gillian Candler wrote a Reckoning about factual books, while Maria Gill had some thoughts…

The Reckoning: Shelving Creative Non-fiction

Non-fiction writer Maria Gill ponders the nature of a creative non-fiction story for children and how creative non-fiction stories are categorised. Toroa’s Journey, by Maria Gill and Gavin Mouldey, is released this week by Potton & Burton. Abel Tasman: Mapping…

The Sampling: Cook Islands Heroes

We are excited to present this excerpt from David Riley’s Cook Island Heroes, the most recent book in his Pasifika Heroes series. David Riley’s book covers a huge spectrum about what a ‘hero’ is, and mixes legends with true tales of heroic Cook Islanders. He includes leaders, scientists, educators, creative artists, writers, and sportspeople, and many more.

Book Review: Sky High, by David Hill & Phoebe Morris

David Hill and Phoebe Morris have collaborated on a third picture book in their series introducing young New Zealanders to historic adventurers. We asked Louise Ward from Wardini Books in Hawke’s Bay to check it out for us. The first…

Four new international non-fiction books

Mary Wadsworth, co-owner of the Dorothy Butler Children’s Bookshop in Auckland, reviews four recent non-fiction titles by international authors – Finding Gobi: The True Story of One Little Dog’s Big Journey, about an extreme athlete’s quest to find a dog…

Book Awards: the non-fiction finalists

As part of our coverage of this year’s NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, we asked the Elsie Locke Award for Non-fiction finalist authors five quick questions about their books and how they wrote them, and asked for some…