Book Review: The Great Kiwi ABC Book, by Donovan Bixley

Available now in bookshops nationwide.

The moment The Great Kiwi ABC arrived in the post it was devoured by my 5-year-old and whipped of to school to be shared with the class.

Bixley’s illustrations always delight. They have a particularly kiwi flavour, with just a hint of nostalgia to them. Frequently Bixley uses themes like farming, native plants and birds and rugby mixed with a cheeky humour and a sense of hide and seek. It’s his trademark to hide themed characters or illustrations on every page, so you require multiple readings to find everything. This was the premise of one of his earlier and most popular books The Looky Book. In our household we’re on to the third version, such is the use that the pages eventually get ripped or ruined from constant turning – overloving, as it were.

Like the The Looky Book, The Great Kiwi ABC is also fun for adults, as they can get just as engaged as their little ones finding all the pictorial treasures. With my older child I get her to try and spell each item or character as she finds them, to hilarious results. Who knew squid could be spelt ‘SWQUEEDDD”? Oh well.

This particular ABC book is for younger readers. Each page is dedicated to a letter, and is a mix of typed words and discoverable characters including a milkshake-making cow (a hilarious concept that Bixley uses often in his work), All Black Lambs (another common them throughout the 50+ publications he’s drawn for) a very cutesy pink and white ski-bunny and a huge salmon pink squid. Vibrancy and humour are Bixley’s signatures and they are here in abundance.

Bixley does write and illustrate for older readers, too. His newest book, Much Ado About Shakespeare, is his own special mission to bring the great bard to life 400 years after his death in a wonderful illustrated literary work. Bixley has been a regular winner of New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, his book Monkey Boy was listed by the International Youth Library as one of their top 200 books in the world.

And as for my 5-year-old’s classmates – they spent all morning trying to find animals and items beginning with the letter ‘C’ on page 4. They found three more than their teacher. One up to them.

Reviewed by Tim Gruar

The Great Kiwi ABC
by Donovan Bixley
Published by Upstart Press
ISBN 9781927262719