Book Review: Taka Ki Ro Wai – He Kōrero Pūrākau mo Tētāhi Hoiho, by Keri Kaa, illustrated by Martin D Page

Available in bookstores nationwide, this is the winner of the inaugural Maori Language Award in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. 

This Māori language, 59 page picture book is an amazing compilation of story, artwork and photography, decorated and enhanced with examples of Māori weaving and carving patterns.

Publisher Tania was kind enough to relate the story to me in English (I am not bilingual) which I can summarise for you. As a Māori reader, you will get more out of the book than I can, so bear with me.

It is the true story of a rural home, surrounded by farmland, in the area of Ngati Porou, on which after an extremely rainy stormy night, the woman of the house looking out her window realises her mare is in difficulties. On closer investigation, she sees the mare has foaled overnight. The foal is still trapped in the birth sac, and in such deep water the mare cannot assist it to break free.

Friends come to help; they drag the foal onto higher ground, wrap it in a blanket with the hopes of saving the exhausted foal, who is very cold after being submerged in water. The mare is incapable of anything, so exhausted is she after birthing in the night and struggling in the flooded paddock.

The mare has shared her paddock with a pig, and is used to its smell. The pig comes to the foal, and tears open the birth sac. It licks then rubs against the foal, for so long it tires and drops to rest in exhaustion. It returns to the foal and now starts treading with its forelegs on its back, until finally the foal comes alive. The mare returns, and coaxes the foal to stand and feed.

This book is a strong mixture of the expertise of the story teller and of the illustrator. Every page has its own significance to te tikanga Māori, to rural communities, and to – especially – spell-bound children.

The publishers have assured me there is a solid intention to produce an English language version in the future. I will happily announce that here when it happens.

Translations of the front cover (thanks to publisher Tania)…
Main Title – Taka Kiro Wai = Fell in the water
Sub-title – He Kōrero Pūrākau mo Tētāhi Hoiho = A story about a horse
(Yellow circle sub-subtitle – He Kōrero Pūrākau Tūturu Tēnei = This is a true story

Reviewed by Lynne McAnulty-Street, published originally on her review blog here. 

Taka Ki Ro Wai – He Kōrero Pūrākau mo Tētāhi Hoiho
Author Keri Kaa
Artist Martin D Page
Publication 2013 by Tania&Martin, Rotorua NZ
ISBN 9780473184063

Book Review: A Winter’s Day in 1939, by Melinda Szymanik

This book is a finalist in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, in the Junior Fiction section. It is available at bookstores nationwide, and we have a giveaway of this book on our Facebook page.

I had my pick of the finalists of the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and I am pleased that I picked this one up! It isn’t my usual reading material, but it was a very interesting insight into a part of the European war history that I wasn’t completely aware of.

This book is based on the true story of Melinda’s father, who was, along with his family, taken from his home in Poland by the USSR and placed into a series of camps in Russia. Run of course by socialist principles, those over 14 worked for a small wage, while the children were left to their own devices. If this was all, it would be a very short story – but  the problem of what to do with these displaced Poles became a saga, with the family crossing thousands of miles to several different camps around Russia.

At the beginning of the war, Hitler had a deal with Stalin to stay out of the USSR, in return for their help in clearing some of the pesky Eastern Europeans out of their countries so he had an easy run. Stalin was happy to oblige, but all this changed in June 1941 when Hitler pushed on into Mother Russia. Suddenly, the Poles were allies and the able-bodied men and women were given the opportunity to sign up for the displaced Polish army.

The book highlights the psychological and physical impacts that World War 2 had on civilians who were deemed to be in the way. Being transplanted from your homeland and having your property and all you own removed from you was only the beginning. The effects of living in close quarters in camps ruled by those who only knew their orders created problems with disease and starvation on a massive scale. There were approximately 6 million Polish civilians killed through ‘crimes to humanity’, as well as through  famine and disease. The cost to the Polish population as a whole was higher than the cost to any other population in the world (stats from Wikipedia).

While this could be grim handled the wrong way, Melinda tackles it from the point of view of a 12-year-old boy, and though of course he observes all this, she manages it without making the family’s plight seem at all hopeless. Through everything, the boy enjoys relationships with animals big and small, as a way of keeping his mind off the real atrocities happening around him. The protagonist is determined to survive, and to ensure his family survives, and he learns a lot about human behaviour along the way.  Melinda is a very skilled observer of family relationships, and this is what really brings the book to a higher level.

A Winter’s Day in 1939 is a well-written book, perfectly pitched for the junior fiction audience. I would like to encourage everybody with a child in this age range to encourage their child to read it, for entertainment as well as for the subject matter.

Reviewed by Sarah Forster

A Winter’s Day in 1939
by Melinda Szymanik
Published by Scholastic NZ
ISBN 9781775430308