Mele Tonga-Grant reviews two recent YA publications from Aotearoa. The Paradise Generation by Sanna Thompson Set in Te Whanganui-ā-Tara, The Paradise Generation gives us a glimpse of a utopian future, in a place that we understand and can believe to…
The winners of the NZ Booklovers Awards will be announced at the end of the week. Before we find out who takes out the picture book, junior fiction and young adult prizes, we spoke with the Booklovers team to find…
By Katharine J Adams We’re sharing a sneak peak at a chapter from Tonight, I Bleed, the sequel to NZCYA-shortlisted Tonight, I Burn. The book will be launched at Paper Plus Coastlands on Thursday 27 March and will be available…
Bee Trudgeon provides an introduction to manga, for grown ups who may be trying to keep up with the kids. Japan has had a failsafe way to attract teens to books for decades, but in Aotearoa the magnetic wonder of…
Kiri Lightfoot, author of the young adult novel Bear, on how writing a book for teens reminded her how tricky the transition to adulthood can be. I spent nearly a decade writing a novel for young adults. Yes, it took…
We asked The Sapling’s editors and contributors for their best reads of the year. The criteria was broad: recent books preferred but not strictly enforced, titles from Aotearoa or overseas and books for babies to young adults. Here’s what we…
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…
Eight year olds to teens edition. Avid book collectors know that some of the best informed opinions on books are found over the counter at your local bookstore, so we’ve asked Aotearoa’s specialist children’s booksellers what they’re recommending for Christmas…
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…
Denika Mead recently researched and presented a seminar on the emergence of the ‘new adult’ age category for fiction as part of her studies for the Whitireia Graduate Diploma in Publishing. Here, she asks and explains ‘What is new adult…