As part of our celebration for Mahuru Māori, and continuing te wiki o te reo Māori a bit more, we have a special challenge for you. The library has signs in te reo Māori across all of our floors. Your challenge is to find the sign to earn a takawai – a drink bottle.
Find the right sign on the right day from 14 – 20 September between 2pm – 3pm. One of our kaimahi will be waiting nearby, and when you tell them the sign, you win a takawai!
The sign for Wenerei – Wednesday (14 September) is: Nau mai haere mai ki Te Ara Whānui o te Ao. Found on the Welcome Wall, Mezzanine Floor
The sign for Tāite – Thursday (15 September) is: Kōpae Ataata/Movies. Found in the Sound and Vision area, Mezzanine Floor.
The sign for Paraire – Friday (16 September) is: Kaupapa Māori. Found in Heritage, Second Floor
The sign for Hātarei – Saturday (17 September) is: Kia Ora/Hello. Found on the First Floor
The sign for Rātapu – Sunday (18 September) is: Ō Pukuhohe/Humour. Found in the Children’s area, First Floor.
The sign for Mane – Monday (19 September) is: maru āhuru mōwai/your living room. Found in the Sound and Vision area, Mezzanine Floor.
The sign for Tūrei – Tuesday (20 September) is: pukapuka hou/new books. Found in the Fiction area, First Floor.
Good luck, and we’ll see you between 2-3pm with your takawai!
Ngā pukapuka o te Ao Māori (Books of Te Ao Māori) – Tamariki/ Children
This Te Wiki o te reo Māori we dug into the catalogue to find some ka pai suggestions to help you and your whānau immerse yourselves in te ao Māori. Even if you can’t yet speak te reo, Palmerston North City Library has resources to support your use of te reo Māori. We dived into the catalogue to find some ka pai suggestions for tamariki and beginning (to intermediate) learners of te reo and for reading skills. Research shows that reading and listening is an important part of acquiring a new language, so reinforcing what you learn with a book will help you in the long term. You can even make it a family activity to practice reading and listening with a story time habit of reading a book in te reo Māori!
Here’s a few fun book ideas to get you started:
First words
The Māori picture dictionary : Papakupu whakaahua ko Margaret Sinclair
Contains illustrations for over 1400 of the most common words used in daily life. Find it in the Library.
This is the te reo Māori edition of My Mum is Queen of the Road. Ari and Isabella play with trucks and diggers, making roads in a sandpit. Ari tells Isabella that his mother is a roadworker who works the Stop/Go sign and is called Queen of the Road. Isabella tries to work out why she is a queen. Does she wear diamonds? Does she sit on a throne? Does she have a corgi?
A te reo Māori edition of this internationally bestselling picture book.
Kei te hia hunahuna a Arewhana. Nau mai, whakapiri mai! Otirā kia kaha koe – ka KINO tana pai!
A small boy and his elephant play an absurd game of hide and seek in this beautifully illustrated picture book that will have young readers shouting out loud in delight, and adults laughing too, as Elephant hides, in full view.
Before the beginning there was nothing. No sound, no air, no colour: nothing. TE KORE, NOTHING. No one knows how long this nothing lasted because there was no time. However, in this great nothing there was a sense of waiting. Something was about to happen. Meet the gods, demigods and heroes of the Māori world, and explore Aotearoa’s exciting legends from the Creation to the Migration.
It’s national kapa haka competition time again, and this Māori performing arts festival is a big event! It needs planning, tactics and dedication – and that’s just for the people watching! Nan’s a hardcore kapa haka follower, and she shows her mokopuna all the tricks to get the best seats, find the choicest pāua and whitebait fritters, hunt out the coolest poi and pounamu, and meet the star performers. And all along, Nan’s keeping a big secret!
The Astromancer : the rising of Matariki, ko Witi Ihimaera
The Astromancer is looking for four new apprentices to learn about Matariki and the Maramataka calendar. She chooses three boys and an orphan girl, Aria, who will come only if she can bring her smelly dog. Aria, though, is bored by the lessons, and she doesn’t want to be told what to do. But these are dangerous times, and Ruatapu the Ravenous is about to threaten the safety of the whole tribe. Will Aria step up to save them?
Te rātaka a tama hūngoingoi : te hautaka a Greg Heffley, ko Jeff Kinney
Being a kid can really stink. And no one knows this better than Greg Heffley. In this brilliant translation of Jeff Kinney’s bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Heni Jacob, twelve year old hero Geoff Heffley is the Tama Hūngoingoi (Wimpy Kid) of the title. He tells us all about his life in te reo Māori.
Hewa is about a boy who wants to help protect his family and friends. It involves American military software, a futuristic battleship called the USS Barack Obama, and artificial intelligences gaining sentience and self determination. Told in te reo Māori.
Battle at the Gate: the story of the Battle of Gate Pā, Tauranga, New Zealand. by Jenny Jenkins.
A historical fiction for primary age children, Battle at the Gate tells a story of a young Māori woman who tended the British soldiers wounded at the battle of Gate Pā.
Kia kaha : a storybook of Māori who changed the world ko Stacey Morrison
Kia Kaha is a collection of true stories about amazing Māori who have achieved incredible things. Each of them blazed a trail in their own way, and this pukapuka was written to show that with your kura huna, your special gifts, you can make a difference too.
Out in the moana, underneath the sparkling sun, lived a mother sea lion and her little pup. A playful retelling of the much-loved traditional story, Over in the Meadow.
This is just a selection of content available to borrow at Palmerston North City Library. Pay us a visit and chat with our friendly team to discover a range of books to suit your learning needs – regardless of age.
Manawatū farmer and poet Tim Saunders is coming to the Library as our guest author for Off The Page on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd September. On Friday Tim will discuss his work and books with (also a) poet and farmer Janet Newman. On Saturday he is hosting a poetry workshop. Registrations are open to attend the workshop – contact genny.vella@pncc.govt.nz to book your seat.
We asked Tim a few questions about his life and work to get the conversation started:
PNCL: You mention some great dog names in the article on The Spinoff. What’s the best dog name you’ve heard?
Tim: Most working dogs need a short, sharp name that rolls off the tongue easily. We have Sam at the moment, and before him we had Chip and Zing and Boss and Pete. Dad once bought a dog called Phillip, but had to change its name to Pip because yelling “Go away back Phillip” was too much of a mouthful. I also knew a shepherd once who named every single dog he owned Ned. He ran a pack of around 10 working dogs, and we were inundated with dogs whenever he shouted “Get in behind Ned.”
PNCL: When drafting sheep, do you count them in multiples? (eg. fives? twos?) Does that affect the rhythm of your poetry?
Tim: Dad used to tell me to count their legs and then divide by four… There are many rhythms on the farm that can influence poetry. Working with animals and observing the changes in season give poetry a natural metre and cadence. Animals have a particular poetry in the way they move and behave, and to capture their essence and beauty in words is very satisfying.
PNCL: Tell us the best farming TV show theme tune. You can choose either A Dog’s Show or Country Calendar. Which will it be?
Tim: Maybe mash-up between the two – we could call it A Dog’s Calendar.
Q: How old were you when you noticed a poetic tendency? What were your early poems about?
Tim: I didn’t really start to write poetry until I was in my thirties. I have always written short stories, but poetry seemed quite daunting and academic. I think the way it was taught at school didn’t help. But as I got older I really started to appreciate the craft of writing poetry, and the ability to convey a story using its most basic elements. I have never taken a formal class or workshop on poetry, I learnt the craft purely from reading poems and taking them apart to see how they worked. I try to write poems from my own observations and experiences, but they are not always rurally based.
Q: Is there a season that particularly resonates with or inspires you for your writing?
Tim: I think the changes between seasons are inspiring. The little gaps where the elements are neither one thing nor the other. Those times that we don’t normally notice, the gradual changes. That’s where the magic happens.
Thanks Tim! We’re looking forward to having you this week. And we look forward to welcoming the public to talk seasons, farming and poetry with us.
We are thrilled to host Crime After Crime: the world’s finest crime writers come to Palmerston North on 13 September. We expect a criminally good night!
Val McDermid is considered to be crime-writing royaly. Over 18 million copies of her books have sold to date, and there have been several TV adaptions. Her latest book, 1989 is the second book in the Allie Burns series.
Michael Robotham is Australia’s hottest crime writer; his Joseph O’Loughlin series was a worldwide bestseller and is currently being adapted for the screen. He’s also well known for his bestseller The Secrets She Keeps, now an award-winning TV drama with Season 2 streaming now on TVNZ+. His latest book is Lying Beside You.
Rotorua-born J.P. Pomare’s debut novel Call Me Evie won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel, and his second book In the Clearing will soon grace our screens via Disney+. His fifth book, The Wrong Woman, is out now.
To get our interrogation started, we sent 3 burning questions to the authors. Here’s what they had to say for themselves.
What’s the weirdest thing in your (writing-related) search history?
J.P.POMARE: The one thing I think that has put me on a watchlist (If I am on one) was ‘How to drown a child’ which I searched for In The Clearing
VAL MCDERMID: It would have to be a toss-up between ‘home-made bomb 1994’ and ‘how to climb the Inaccessible Pinnacle on Sgurr Alasdair.’ And lots of searching for accurate names for characters of different nationalities. ‘Most common Lithuania surnames,’ that sort of thing.
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: When I was writing Bombproof, I had to research how to make a homemade bomb known as the ‘Mother of Satan’. I was convinced that the security services were going to pick up on trigger words and come storming into my house to arrest me.
Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you know how the book will end when you start writing?
J.P.POMARE: I know how the book is going to end, but I’m still a pantser when it comes to the writing. I view the end of the story as a point on the compass and will generally head in that direction but won’t follow a map, or have a plan as to what is going to happen. I just like to be surprised as I write.
VAL MCDERMID: I used to be a plotter. When I started out, I thought plotting was my weakest area, so I worked hard on getting the story coherently laid out on file cards before I started. Then that suddenly stopped working for me mid-book. Now, I know the broad brush strokes of the story, the ending I’m aiming for and a couple of crucial turning points along the way. Writing is a process, and we don’t always control what works for us!
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I’m definitely a pantser. When I was writing LYING BESIDE YOU, I was three quarters the way through and still didn’t know who the villain was going to be.
One of the benefits is that I make each of the suspects equally credible, because I don’t know who I’m going to choose. I think sometimes when you know too early, you can make the villain either too obvious, or tried to hide them too well and not give the reader a chance to guess the ending. I figure, that if I don’t see the twists coming – neither will the reader.
What pseudonym would you use if you had to go on the run after a – hopefully non-lethal – crime? J.P.POMARE: Paul Gilbert — it might be a little obvious, and I’m sure Reid would figure it out in ten seconds but it’s my middle name and my Grand Mothers Maiden name.
VAL MCDERMID: Something really bland and common. Emma Taylor, Sarah Robertson, Jane Brown. That sort of thing. And if I dyed my hair its original colour, nobody would recognise me!
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: Inspector Endeavour Morse. (Nobody would ever suspect me of anything).
The New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults champion and honour New Zealand’s literature for tamariki and rangatahi. The winners were announced on Wednesday August 10, and now’s your chance to check them out.
The awards are a celebration of New Zealand’s children’s authors and illustrators, and the contribution they make to building our national identity and heritage. So without further ado, here’s the winners of 2022! We’re including a link to the book in our collection, so you can see if it’s available. If it’s not, place a reservation
Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction and Russell Clark Award For Illustration
Atua: Māori Gods and Heroes, written and illustrated by Gavin Bishop
“Before the beginning there was nothing. No sound, no air, no colour: nothing. TE KORE, NOTHING. No one knows how long this nothing lasted because there was no time. However, in this great nothing there was a sense of waiting. Something was about to happen.
Lion guards the cake, written and illustrated by Ruth Paul
“Lion is full of pride when it comes to guarding his home and when the birthday cake has been made for the next day’s celebrations, he goes where he is needed most … to guard the cake. But in the morning, the household awakes to a chaotic scene. What happened when Lion was guarding the cake?”
Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction
The Memory Thief, written by Leonie Agnew
Seth has been trapped behind the iron bars of the public gardens for as long as he can remember. By day he’s frozen as a statue of a shepherd boy, but as soon as the sun sets he roams the park, ravenously hungry. He is a troll, and the food he seeks is human memories. Then he meets Stella.
With Vox Pop and high school behind her, 18-year-old Paige arrives in Melbourne with her suitcase and bass guitar; a copy of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles and Joni Mitchell’s Blue – a gift from her estranged mother that she’s still learning to love. Following in the footsteps of her musical heroes, all of whom left home to make it in 1960s New York, Paige knows Melbourne’s the new rock and roll capital of the world: if she can’t make it here, she can’t make it anywhere.
Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award for Te Reo Māori
I Waho, i te Moana, written by Yvonne Morrison, illustrated by Jenny Cooper and translated by Pānia Papa
Out in the moana, underneath the sparkling sun, lived a mother sea lion and her little pup one. A playful retelling of the much-loved traditional story, Over in the Meadow.
Over a million hectares of wild bush-clad land and one young hunter… Nissa Marshall knows that something is hiding deep in the forests of Fiordland National Park – she’s seen their lights in the trees. But what are they, and why does no one else seem to notice them?
Congratulations to the winners! You can see the full shortlist at the New Zealand Book Awards Trust website – it’s a great starting point for some of the newest and best stories for tamariki (children) and rangatahi (youth).
The end of the School Holidays doesn’t mean an end to the fun – the Palmy Kids Read NZ’s Best Reading Challenge runs until 10 August, so keep on reading!
8 July – 10 August
Palmy Kids Read NZ’s Best Reading Challenge
Help Celebrate the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, as a lead up to the winners announcement on August 10, 2022. Read from the shortlist of finalist books or choose some of your favourite reads.
As well as daily activities, we’ve got a new reading challenge to take on:
Palmy Kids Read NZ’s Best Reading Challenge
8 July – 10 August
Help Celebrate the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, as a lead up to the winners announcement on August 10, 2022. Read from the shortlist of finalist books or choose some of your favourite reads.
We’re excited to announce that we’ve added new online tools to our digital collection. LOTE Online for kids, Creativebug, the British Newspaper Archive and new Gale databases have been added to inspire you to explore the pathways of the world.
LOTE stands for ‘languages other than English’, and is pronounced like the ‘loat’ in ‘float’. It has a catalogue of more than 1,600 digital books in more than 50 languages. It’s a fantastic way to help migrant tamariki hear, retain and read their mother tongue. It’s also great for new language learners of all ages to explore their chosen language by listening and reading.
Visit the Children’s Digital Library on our website to navigate to LOTE and our other fantastic Children’s apps. Keep your library card handy to sign in!
Creativebug is the perfect place to pick up a new hobby! With over 1000 online classes, taught by renowned artists and crafters, you can learn to paint, knit, crochet, sew and more. Classes don’t expire, so you can learn at your own pace.
Visit Creativebug now to get started. You’ll need to create an account with your library card number.
The British Newspaper Archive is a database covering 300 years’ worth of British newspaper content. One of our team managed to search and find information about their 5x Great-Grandfather! It’s a fantastic resource for those researching their genealogy.
The British Newspaper Archive is available only on a library computer, with up to 4 seats available at any given time for research. To access and view the archive you need to create an account using an email and password. By registering you’ll be able to view images/documents, keep track of your searches, and bookmark items into folders.
To start researching, come visit us at the library to use a computer – we’ve got loads of cosy spots.
Explore amazing adventures in science, nature, culture, archaeology and space.
Includes the complete run of the magazine from 2009 to the present. Provides authoritative, age appropriate digital content suitable for younger readers.
National Geographic Virtual Library includes the complete archive of National Geographic magazines from 1888 to the present, National Geographic: People, Animals and the World and National Geographic Kids. Along with a cross-searchable collection of National Geographic books, maps, images and videos.
Access content with a focus on Australia and New Zealand.
This database features a variety of magazines, journals, news and multimedia sources, covering important issues and current events related to Australia and New Zealand.
Access information on the latest developments across a range of scientific disciplines. Remain current with the latest scientific developments in the biological sciences, computing, engineering, technology and more. Updated daily.
Covers all aspects of the past and current state of military affairs.
Search scholarly journals, magazines, and reports covering all aspects of past and present military affairs. The database offers content in key subject areas including governmental policies, the socioeconomic effects of war, the structure of the armed forces and more. Updated daily.
The challenge uses the Library’s online platform Beanstack for monitoring and encouraging reading. Join up and log your reading to earn virtual badges.
The Challenge kicks off on Friday 8 July (right at the start of the school holidays!) and finishes on Friday 12 August, following the book awards ceremony on Wednesday 10th when the winning books are announced. Will you read a winner? Join up here and we’ll see!
Recent Comments