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New Zealand children’s comics and stories from our guests at Comicfest

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Earlier this year Wellington City Libraries and the National Library of New Zealand hosted the biennial Comicfest, featuring panels and workshops with New Zealand comic artists such as Roger Langridge, Katie O’Neill, and Michel Mulipola.

Now you can check out their books (and more!) at the newly-opened He Matapihi Molesworth Library, in the National Library.

The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’Neill
“After discovering a lost Tea Dragon in the marketplace, apprentice blacksmith Greta learns about the dying art form of Tea Dragon caretaking from the kind tea shop owners.” (Catalogue)

Aquicorn Cove by Katie O’Neill
“Unable to rely on the adults in her storm-ravaged seaside town, a young girl must protect a colony of magical seahorse-like creatures she discovers in the coral reef. From the award-winning author of PRINCESS PRINCESS EVER AFTER and THE TEA DRAGON SOCIETY comes AQUICORN COVE, a heartfelt story about learning to be a guardian to yourself and those you love. ” (Adapted from catalogue)
Tongan heroes by David Riley
“Illustrated by Michel Mulipola, Tongan heroes presents inspirational stories of achievers who have Tongan ancestry. It includes: Legends like Aho’eitu, Hina and Seketoa, historical figures such as Queen Salote Tupou III, Pita Vi and Professor Futa Helu, contemporary heroes like Jonah Lomu, Captain Kamelia Zarka, Filipe Tohi, The Jets, Manu Vatuvei, Dr Viliami Tangi and Valerie Adams.” (Adapted by catalogue)
Samoan heroes by David Riley
“Illustrated by Michel Mulipola, a collection of inspirational stories of achievers who have Samoan ancestry. It includes: contemporary heroes like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Troy Polamalu, Judge Ida Mālosi, Savage and Associate Professor Donna Adis; historical figures like Emma Coe, Tamasese, Salamāsina and Lauaki; legends like Sina, Tiʻitiʻi and Tigilau” (Adapted by catalogue)
Abigail and the snowman by Roger Langridge
“Nine-year-old Abigail meets a loveable and sophisticated yeti named Claude who’s escaped from a top-secret government facility.” (Catalogue)

Criminy by Roger Langridge 
“Daggum Criminy’s peaceful life is suddenly interrupted as pirates invade his island, casting Criminy’s family out as refugees into the wild unknown in search of a new home. Soon, the Criminys find themselves hopping from one strange locale to another, each with their own bizarre environment, people, and challenges; putting Daggum and fam in constant peril as they search for a new peaceful place to call home.” (Catalogue)

Children’s and Young Adults’ book award winners announced!

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Last night, at a lavish pizza party, the winners of the 2019 book awards for children and young adults were announced.

Hell Pizza are the main sponsors of the books awards (how many pizza wheels have you completed over the last few months?), and it was really exciting to see the very best New Zealand Authors and Illustrators there hoping to be announced as a winner. All the finalist books are incredible, and us librarians recommend you try to read as many as you can.

There are 8 categories: Picture Book, Junior Fiction, Non-Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Illustration, te reo Māori, best first book, and the overall best book of the year.

 

And here are the winners!

It’s really exciting to see Wellington duo Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan win the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award. Mīharo!

Beyond the Page is back in July 2019!

Stephen Clothier 1 Comment

I know we’re only halfway through the school term, but we had some big news we couldn’t wait to share with you — the Beyond the Page festival is returning from 6-21 July 2019! Beyond the Page is New Zealand’s largest literary festival for kids and their families, and this year we’ve organised over 140 free events at libraries and community centres from Island Bay to Ōtaki!

We’re super excited to be able to introduce our four headline acts to you here. For full details about these events, check out the Beyond the Page website, or follow the festival on Facebook!

First up is Bea Lee-Smith from the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Join her on a magical journey into the world of Hansel and Gretel.  Through music and mime, children will learn simple ballet steps and positions. This interactive telling of an old favourite tale will be a great appetizer for you and your family in advance of the RNZB’s exciting new production of Hansel and Gretel later in the year. Suitable for pre-schoolers and primary school aged children.

Next up we have the amazing New Zealand author Donovan Bixley. Donovan has had over 100 books published around the world — I can’t even imagine what it’s like having one book published! His show will have you laughing with amazement as you dive into a world of letters, words, and fuzzy doodles. Suitable for children aged 5+ with their caregivers.

Our next headliner is the fabulously spellbinding storyteller Tanya Batt. Tanya describes herself as a “green-fingered witch, a word warbler and a story stitcher” — which sounds like just my cup of tea! You can join Tanya in one of her imagined worlds as part of this year’s festival, with amazing costumes, live music, and tantalising tales to boot. Suitable for children aged 4+ with their caregivers.

Last but certainly not least is Toro Pikopiko, New Zealand’s most established puppetry theatre company. Yep, you heard that right — puppets! And over 80 of Toro Pikopiko’s amazing hand-crafted puppets star in their incredible rock-art musical extravaganza, Te Rereka (The Flight). This incredible show is bound to inspire and amaze — so don’t miss out! Suitable for children of all ages with their caregivers.

There will be heaps more info coming out soon about the rest of the festival schedule. There’s everything from zine-making and book-creating workshops to robots, coding, and theatre-making. Keep checking the Beyond the Page website and at your local library as the school holidays draw closer to keep up to date with what’s on in your neighbourhood!

Seaweek 2019 – Kaupapa Moana – is here!

Stephen Clothier

New Zealand Seaweek 2019 has officially begun!

This year the theme of Seaweek is Tiakina i tātou Moana — Caring for our Seas, and it runs from the 2nd to the 10th of March. We know that looking after the ocean is really important. We rely on it for food and fun (and a whole bunch of other things, too!), but sometimes the things we do can have a bad effect on the overall health of our seas. Plastic packaging is often thrown away carelessly, and ends up in the ocean, where it can be eaten by sea creatures who mistake it for food. Fertilisers that we use to grow our food on land can make it into the ocean due to runoff into streams and rivers, which feed into the sea. Fertilisers in our waterways often cause toxic algae to grow, which makes it impossible for most animals to live in the area.

Seaweek 2019 is your chance to learn about how you can help! Zoom out to the beach and see if you can help organise a local clean-up, or head along to one of the over 40 events taking place in Wellington for Seaweek this year!

Your library has a bunch of books that can help you learn about what you can do to care for our seas. Check the list below, or ask a friendly librarian to help you find the perfect read for Kaupapa Moana 2019!

Ocean / Howell, Izzi
This book helps you learn all about ocean habitats, what creatures live there, and what we can do to protect these precious parts of the planet’s ecosystem.

The sea book / Milner, Charlotte
Featuring fascinating fishy facts accompanied by bright, bold, and beautiful illustrations, this book takes you on a journey through the sea and all its zones.

Go green! / Gogerly, Liz
Learn all about ways you can reduce, reuse and recycle your way to a healthier planet — and a happier ocean!

Hero of the sea : Sir Peter Blake’s mighty ocean quests / Hill, David
Read this awesome and inspiring book about the life of Sir Peter Blake and how he contributed to safeguarding our oceans and waterways for future generations.

Under the ocean : explore & discover the seas around New Zealand / Candler, Gillian
Learn more about all of the amazing animals that live in and around the oceans of Aotearoa New Zealand, and find out what makes our little corner of the marine world so special!

The Big Kids eBook Read

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New Zealand has a long history of amazing children’s books, with many wonderful authors to  enjoy. Did you know many are also available to borrow through our eLibrary?

Over 3 – 9 December, we’ve joined with Penguin Random House New Zealand and celebrated Wellington author Kate De Goldi to provide unlimited eBook downloads of From the cutting room of Barney Kettle for The Big Kids eBook Read!

 

It’s easy to take part:

On a smart phone or tablet — download the Libby app to your smart phone or mobile device, add Wellington City Libraries as your library, and log in with your library card number and surname to set up your account. Search for ‘From the cutting room of Barney Kettle’ to borrow your copy and start reading.

Users of computers and eReaders, including the Kobo range of eReaders — you’re not left out! Find out more about borrowing our eBooks on our Getting Started with our eLibrary page.

 

From the cutting room of Barney Kettle won the Esther Glenn Award for Junior Fiction in 2016. Here’s what the judges for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, had to say that year:

“Surprising, gripping, heart-breaking and ultimately incredibly moving, this novel stood out right from the start. This book is packed with warmth, wonderful language, rich and witty observations, compelling characters and layers of message and meaning.”

And here’s an intriguing, mysterious blurb about the book to get your curious and interested:

“Meet filmmaker Barney Kettle, who liked to invent stories but found a real one under his nose.

Barney Kettle knew he would be a very famous film director one day, he just didn’t know when that day would arrive. He was already an actual director – he’d made four fifteen-minute films – but so far only his schoolmates and the residents of the High Street had viewed them. Global fame was a little way off. It would come, though. Barney was certain about that …”

For a taste of this award-winning title’s brilliant start, click on the eBook sample below:

 

Join us as we read this brilliant eBook title together across Wellington in December — at school, at home or in the library, we’ll all be reading together!

Huge thanks to Penguin Random House New Zealand and Kate De Goldi, for your support of The Big Kids eBook Read!

Read before you crawl – KidsCrawl Edition!

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The popular LitCrawl has teamed up with Annual 2 and Wellington Central Library for the first ever KidsCrawl! Come along and hunt down a story using the KidsCrawl map. There’s famous people to meet, and a story to uncover and piece together…

KidsCrawl will feature authors and illustrators Bill Manhire, David Larsen, Giselle Clarkson, Michael Petherington, Susan Paris, Kate De Goldi, Gavin Mouldy, Kate Camp and Elizabeth Patrick.

Where and When:

10th November, 10am – 11am

Wellington Central Library, meet in the YA area by the help desk

Email kidscrawl@litcrawl.co.nz to register for the event (ask your parents first!).

 

Before you storyhunters turn up for the KidsCrawl, here’s a guide to what you could read to get ready:

 

Annual and Annual 2, edited by Kate De Goldi and Susan Paris

Fiction, comics, poems, essays, art, satire, and things to do! This is a book for intrepid readers to dip into, pore over, return to again and again. Annual features a dictionary of crazy words that come in handy on car trips, a sophisticated “spot the similarity”, a found poem from school newsletters, a maths-nerd’s memoir full of tricky logic puzzles, comics that embrace other worlds, a very unlucky zebra, and top-class fiction that spans Christchurch Botanic Gardens in the 19th century, the loss of a brother, a Kiwi beach holiday, and a Fontanian boarding school.

 

The Curioseum : collected stories of the odd & marvellous, edited by Adrienne Jansen ; illustrated by Sarah Laing

What happens when you take 22 of New Zealand’s best children’s story writers and let them loose ‘backstage’ at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa? Authors from around the country were invited to choose one of the museum’s taonga (treasures) as a starting point for an imaginative journey. The result is a truly original compendium of stories and poems for children with spirited, original illustrations from the award-winning Sarah Laing.

 

Secret world of butterflies, by Courtney Sina Meredith, Giselle Clarkson

Did you know that butterflies taste with their feet, do a dark red poo when they come out of their chrysalises and that some drink the tears of crocodiles? How does the world look to them, do they ever sleep and how are some of them able to fly so high? This book will open your eyes to these magical creatures around us.

 

 

But wait! There’s more! The fun doesn’t start and finish with the KidsCrawl. You could take home your own copy of Annual 2! Enter for your chance to win.

 

Finalists, finally!

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It’s always tough waiting for this one every year. Luckily you can munch on FREE Hell Pizza while you wait.

But.. the wait is over! Today the finalists for the NZ Children’s and Young Adult Book Awards have been announced. These are the best books written or illustrated by New Zealanders in the last year:

 

Picture Book:

Granny McFlitter the Champion Knitter, written by Heather Haylock and illustrated by Lael Chisholm

 

 

 

 

I am Jellyfish, written and illustrated by Ruth Paul

 

 

 

 

 

That’s Not the Monster We Ordered, written by Richard Fairgray and Terry Jones, and illustrated by Richard Fairgray

 

 

 

 

The Gift Horse, written by Sophie Siers and illustrated by Katharine White

 

 

 

 

The Longest Breakfast, written by Jenny Bornholdt and illustrated by Sarah Wilkins

 

 

 

 

 

Junior Fiction:

How Not to Stop a Kidnap Plot, written by Suzanne Main

 

 

 

 

 

How to Bee, written by Bren MacDibble

 

 

 

 

 

Lyla: Through My Eyes – Natural Disaster Zones, written by Fleur Beale (Also available as an eBook)

 

 

 

 

Dawn Raid, written by Pauline (Vaeluaga) Smith

 

 

 

 

 

The Thunderbolt Pony, written by Stacy Gregg (Also available as a Digital Audiobook)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Junior Non-Fiction:

Aotearoa: The New Zealand Story, written by Gavin Bishop

 

 

 

 

 

Explore! Aotearoa, written by Bronwen Wall and illustrated by Kimberly Andrews

 

 

 

 

New Zealand’s Great White Sharks, written by Alison Balance

 

 

 

 

 

Sky High: Jean Batten’s Incredible Flying Adventures, written by David Hill and illustrated by Phoebe Morris

 

 

 

 

The New Zealand Wars, Written by Philippa Werry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illustration:

Abel Tasman: Mapping the Southern Lands, illustrated by Marco Ivančić

 

 

 

 

Bobby, the Littlest War Hero, illustrated by Jenny Cooper

 

 

 

 

 

Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts, illustrated and written by Craig Phillips (also available as a eBook)

 

 

 

 

I am Jellyfish, written and illustrated by Ruth Paul

 

 

 

 

 

 

Te Reo Māori:

Tu Meke Tūī! Written by Malcolm Clarke, translated by Evelyn Tobin and illustrated by Hayley King (Also available in English)

 

 

 

 

Hineahuone, written and illustrated by Xoë Hall and translated by Sian Montgomery-Neutze

Te Tamaiti me te Aihe, written and illustrated by Robyn Kahukiwa and translated by Kiwa Hammond

 

 

Check out the YA (and other) categories.

 

The winners will be announced on August 8th. Stay tuned…

BIG BOOK BASH: Wairarapa & Wellington Kids & Youth Festival

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Love writing and making Zines? Enjoy storytimes and want to meet some of your favourite authors and illustrators? How about learning to make Ginomee hats or paper bag dogs? These are just some of the 30+ free events that are going to be on offer at the BIG BOOK BASH! With so much cool stuff on offer your day will be jam packed but don’t forget to come along to the Wellington City Library stand and pick up a Scavenger Hunt entry form so you can go into the draw to win a bag filled with BOOKS! Be prepared for a feast of books and a fabulous array of authors, illustrators and activities at the BIG BOOK BASH, Saturday 2nd December in Carterton, Wairarapa. Here’s too a fun filled and (fingers crossed) sunshine filled day, hope to see you there!

What: BIG BOOK BASH: Wairarapa & Wellington

Where: Caterton Library, Event Centre and Courthouse

When: Saturday 2nd December, 11am – 6pm

All events are free but some require registration contact Carterton District Library to register

Wild About Reading! Summer Reading Challenge

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Yes it’s nearly time to Slip, Slop, Slap and read, relax and rummage through some fantabulous books! Summer Reading Challenge is just around the corner and have we got some great reads lined up for you this Summer!!!

So for those of you new to this and a reminder to the rest of us who feel like last summer was ages and ages ago, here’s what it’s all about…

Down at Wellington City Libraries we have chosen some of our favourite books, and hopefully some of yours, to see how many of them you can get through between the 1st of December to the 31st of January 2018. There are 60+ books on our list so plenty of variety. The idea is to read a book from the list then go to the Kid’s Page on our website, click on the Kids Club and start writing reviews. Even better you get prizes as well! Also each review puts you in the draw for an amazing book bag full of exciting books and things. Don’t belong to the Kids Club yet? It’s easy to join online check out the Kids Page to find out how.

So here’s a little preview of what’s in store for you this summer!

Ever thought of having a raven as a pet? Well that’s what happened to Arabel when her Dad (a London Taxi driver) finds a raven in the middle of the road one night and brings it. From there the crazy wild adventures begin, who knew a raven could reek so much havoc. Read about Arabel and Mortimer ‘s hilarious antics in one of the 4 books in the Arabel and Mortimer series with fantastic illustrations by Quentin Blake.

 

The Doomspell by Cliff McNish is an amazing fantasy trilogy which are a must for all Harry Potter and Northern Lights fans! “Rachel has been having disturbing dreams that start to feel too real. Then one day, she and her brother are ripped through a wall in her house and transported to a dangerous world ruled by a manipulative witch and her ancient underlings.” – Publisher

 

 

Moa by James Davidson. I don’t know about you, but I love reading comics and summer for me is the perfect time to hang out in a hammock with a great big stack of them! Moa is a laugh out loud series and the perfect thing for those hot summer days. “Ride along with Kiwi and Possum on their side-splitting adventures battling mythical creatures and dangerous hunters in colonial New Zealand! This treasury collection contains all five issues of James Davidson’s acclaimed comic series Moa, sure to delight readers of all ages.” – Publisher.

That was just a sneak peak of what’s in store for you over the holiday season and guess what there are another 57+ books to choose from! So keep an eye out at your local library and on our website for the Wild About Reading: Summer Reading Challenge booklet.

What: Wild About Reading: Summer Reading Challenge booklet

When: Available at your local Library from 18th November 2017