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From witches to pancakes, skateboarding and protests: our personal favourites
This year's New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults ceremony will be held next Wednesday evening.
In anticipation, the book lovers in the shared Read NZ Te Pou Muramura / Booksellers office have been reminiscing about books from their early reading days today, which is officially #BooksAlive day on social media.
Whether direct from childhood or more recent titles, here are some of our favourite New Zealand children's books. We'd love to hear yours too, so please do join in the conversation! Email us your favourite (communications@read-nz.org) or comment on our social media posts, using the hashtags #BooksAlive and #NZCYA to help promote the awards.
Read NZ Accounts Manager Rachael Hearne shares this beautiful photo of baby Kieran being read to by his grandfather Max.
Rachael says: "We love to read Kiwis and Koalas (by Sarah Milne and Laura Bernard) to Kieran to help bridge the gap between our home here in Wellington and his Australian grandparents in Sydney.
"We love that the story explores beautiful places in both New Zealand and Australia and Kieran loves the artwork – he always points at the dog Woof. When his grandparents were visiting they also enjoyed sharing the story with him – I’ve included a photo of Kieran’s grandpa Max reading him the story."
Booksellers Administrator and author Pip Adam casts her mind back to 1992, when she discovered a library copy of Terry and the Gunrunners by Bob Kerr and Stephen Ballantyne.
"In 1982, my grandmother brought home a copy of Terry and the Gunrunners from Pakuranga Public Library. She would go to the library while my mother did the grocery shopping. She was mainly getting her weekly collection of Mills & Boon but she would always bring home some books for my brother and I.
Terry and the Gunrunners blew my brother and my minds! I was 12 and starting to think I was too cool for books but this comic changed that thought. Terry Teo skateboarded. He skateboarded around really familiar-looking streets. My favourite thing by far was the way each book started with a Rube Goldberg machine that was designed to wake Terry up. We had a standing order for our grandmother to get Terry and the Gunrunners out any time it was at the library. I remember looking at the drawings of the wake-up machine for hours. I often think about that machine when I'm writing novels."
Gemma Browne, Booksellers Programmes Coordinator, remembers a childhood favourite from her whānau shelf:
I grew up with a copy of Big Daddy Protests! by Don and the Dr on my family bookshelf. Published in 1977, it’s a gorgeous story of non-violent direct action, where the titular Big Daddy takes a stand to save his favourite tree from being felled.
While the style of the book is very much of its time, the message is timeless. I was proud to pass on my childhood copy to my godson, whose activist parents met at a protest."
Gem writes more about the power of this book, and protests in general, here on the Sapling.
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura CEO Juliet Blyth remembers reading the evocative 1979 classic Under the Mountain by Maurice Gee as a kid.
"I remember reading Under the Mountain by Maurice Gee. The thing I most remember is watching the TV series that must have come out not long after, and watching it from behind the sofa through my fingers - it was so creepy! (You can have a look at a clip over on NZ On Screen, here).
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Programmes Manager Kathryn Carmody has chosen a NZ-published and translated children’s book to feature.
Kathryn says:
“I’m going with Pancakes for Findus written and illustrated by Sven Nordqvist (2007) and translated from the original Swedish by Wellingtonian Julia Marshall, of Gecko Press.
“I’m choosing this book because of how it captures all the little things that make up a day. Its gentle humour and gorgeous illustrations are a tonic.”
Who doesn’t like reading about delicious food? It looks like there are some copies in the public libraries around the motu and there are some page spreads on the Gecko Press website here.
Read NZ Fundraising Manager Leonie Exel is passionate about animals and their welfare, and that’s reflected in her early reading, too. She says:
“Just as mythical animals lead us to beautiful things, as a child, books about animals helped to lead me to a love of reading.
"From Willard Price's many fictional adventures, to Gerald Durrell's real family (and other animals), and James Herriot's yarns about life as a rural vet, books about animals were a staple diet.
Nowadays, when I really need to escape - even after four or five decades since I first read them - I grab Richard Adams' Watership Down, or Phillip Temple's Beak of the Moon, and re-enter my portal to childhood. Bliss!”
Read NZ’s Melissa (communications) remembers with fondness many of Margaret Mahy’s books from her 80s childhood including The Bus Under the Leaves, Jam: A True Story, and The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate.
“But it was The Witch Under the Cherry Tree that was my all-time favourite,” she says.
“Its pages were thin and soft as fabric from being turned so often. I remember reading this story countless times to my younger siblings. We also regularly baked gingerbread witches from the recipe at the back of the book, desperately wishing we had a magical egg-beater like in the story.
"I still remember my little sister Sarah sadly saying “ohhhh, poor witchy...” when we got to the bit where the witch is shut out of the house in the rain. And when we burned cakes or biscuits at home, we’d say “but witches prefer them that way!”
