An extract from Across the Risen Sea, the new climate-fiction novel from junior fiction superstar Bren MacDibble. We’re off the coast of Australia. Survivors of a calamitous sea-level rise live in small island settlements, gardening and fishing and scavenging in wet-to-the-waist skyscrapers. There are sinkholes, storms and massive sharks, and lots of crocs. In this … Read more
What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. AUCKLAND 1 Mophead by Selina Tusitala Marsh (Auckland University Press $25, 5+) Your newly-anointed Margaret Mahy Book of the Year; “perfect”, the judges said; freshly reviewed for us … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle (Allen & Unwin, $33) “We are left, breathless, at the last, game-changing sentence.” … Read more
An adventure story that splits the difference between action-packed intrigue and touching melancholy, Sam Brooks reviews Lizard’s Tale, which has just won the Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction. When you think of settings for a children’s novel, the dawn before the dusk of the Second World War in Singapore is probably … Read more
Odessa To’o on Selina Tusitala Marsh’s picture book Mophead, which was just named the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year. I almost didn’t read this book because of the title. Mophead. Instantly recognisable as an insult for anyone with big hair, even though I’ve never been called it myself. The kids at my primary school … Read more
Announcing the winners of the 2020 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. The supreme prize of the night, the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award, goes to Selina Tusitala Marsh for her super-personal picture book, Mophead. Mophead is memoir and clapback and wild doodle; it’s the story of what it felt … Read more
What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. AUCKLAND 1 Sleepy Kiwi by Kat Merewether (Illustrated Publishing, $20, 0-3) Black-and-white board book by the author/illustrator of all the Kuwi books. Tiny bubs love to look … Read more