Blog Archives

Brave new worlds, Joan de Hamel

The Tomorrow Code Brian Falkner   Walker Books, $19.99, ISBN 781921150340 Juno of Taris Fleur Beale    Random House, $18.99, ISBN 781869419882 About Griffen’s Heart  Tina Shaw   Longacre Press, $19.99, ISBN 87746015 Chronicles of Stone: Scorched Bone Vincent Ford  Scholastic New Zealand,…
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Posted in Children, Literature, Review

Bright fine gold, Peter Calder

Diggers, Hatters and Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes Stevan Eldred-Grigg Random House, $55.00, ISBN 9781869419257 In the closing pages of this comprehensive, even magisterial, historical survey, the author quotes the observation by Joan Stevens in The…
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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review

Debuts and returns, Linda Burgess

Enemy at the Gate  Philippa Werry Scholastic New Zealand, $17.99  ISBN 9781869438135 Old Drumble  Jack Lasenby  HarperCollins, $16.99, ISBN 978169506742 Chicken Feathers  Joy Cowley and David Elliot (illus) Puffin Books, $17.95, ISBN 9780143303909 Five (and a bit) Days in the…
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Posted in Children, Literature, Review

Cannibalism and communion, Andrew Fieldsend

This Horrid Practice: The Myth and Reality of Traditional Maori Cannibalism Paul Moon Penguin Books, $40.00, ISBN 9780143006718 Macaulay said that history was sometimes fiction, sometimes theory. But Paul Moon’s provocative and controversial book sets out to establish objective facts…
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Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

Between rocks and hard places, David Hill

The Real McKay Graham Bishop Otago University Press, $45.00,  ISBN 9781877372223 The Amazing World of James Hector  Simon Nathan and Mary Varnham (eds) Awa Press, $25.00, ISBN 9780958275071 The first time I went on a Geological Society field trip, we…
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Posted in Biography, History, Non-fiction, Review

Celebrating the singular, Julia Millen

Sit There and Draw That! Helen Crabb (“Barc”): Artist and Teacher   Patricia Fry Steele Roberts, $29.99, ISBN 9781877448546 Bill’s Story: A Portrait of W A Sutton Pat Unger Canterbury University Press, $39.99,  ISBN 9781877257704  Painting Out the Past: The Life…
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Posted in Art, Biography, Non-fiction, Review

Poem – Tim Upperton

History   Turn the pages, slowly. Each word afloat  on narrative’s sea, each glyph the principal  character in its own story, each clinging on  for dear life. A is aleph, an ox. Upside down,  its blank, horned face blazes through…
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Posted in Poem

Refusing to come quietly, Nepia Mahuika

Ngai Tahu: A Migration History –  The Carrington Text  Rawiri Te Maire Tau and Atholl Anderson (eds)  Bridget Williams Books with Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, $69.99, ISBN 9781877242397 The Beating Heart: A Political and Socio-economic History of Te Arawa …
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Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

The sound of the cuckoo, Doug Munro

Samuel Marsden: Altar Ego Richard Quinn Dunmore Publishing, $34.95, ISBN 9781877399350 As a New Zealand schoolboy in the 1960s, I knew the Rev Samuel Marsden (1765-1838) as the great and good man who introduced Christianity to the Maori in 1814.…
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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
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