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Story of Hope in post-WWII Europe

19/1/2025

Death and the Dancing Girl
by Jenny Harrison

Death and the Dancing Girl is set in Britain and France shortly after World War II. Tom Blake is lost – his Special Operations role has ended, his estranged wife has died in a concentration camp, and he doesn’t know how to build a future. A visitor arrives – his wife’s brother – with news that his wife may be alive and also a daughter Tom never knew he had.
Tom’s search for his daughter and wife becomes his purpose. He traverses regions of post-war France in his quest. I found the descriptions of post-war times very interesting – I have read a lot more about the time of WWII than about the privation immediately following. The book contains an interesting array of characters who Tom meets along the way, including his volatile brother-in-law Lucien who grows, makes and sells wine. Tom discovers solace in working in the vineyard, despite being desperate to move on in his hunt.
Detailed descriptions of places are strength in Death and the Dancing Girl. The writing makes it easy to imagine both the remaining beauty and the struggles of the post-war era. There was, perhaps, a little too much agonising over the loss of a daughter about whom Tom knew nothing and had never met. However, if you have little in your life, you could easily become obsessed by an unknown ray of hope.
Overall, Death and the Dancing Girl is an easy read which keeps you wanting to know…why Tom is in his situation, whether daughter Sophie and Madeleine are still alive, where they might be if they are alive. To find out the answers, read the book!

Review by Jane Shearer

Title: Death and the Dancing Girl
Author: Jenny Harrison
Publisher: Lamplighter Press
ISBN: 978-0-473-72623-2
RRP: $32.99
Available: print & e-book from [email protected]

Collection from ‘Man of Letters’

4/12/2024

Table Talk – Opinions, stories, and a play
by C.K. Stead

Karl Stead doesn’t use many sports metaphors in his writing, but as it’s a good summer read, we could call him an ‘all-rounder’ in his latest book. He writes that it is intended for book people, especially groups (not cricket teams), but there is non-fiction and short fiction here; and he is the veteran who remains ‘not out’, when so many of his contemporaries have left the crease for good.
Many New Zealand book people will be familiar with his approach, but in this book he goes right back to the 1950s, to complete his novice version of a play called Andromache; he also seems to have written another version as a short story, innocuously titled ‘A Family Man’, for this book. Are we looking at a compendium of his favoured themes over the intervening years, or a miscellany?
Part 1 includes short essays, reviews, book launch speeches, reader reports, and also blog posts, which are easy to read and involve a variety of interesting subjects. These cover all sorts of writers, including some almost forgotten poets, like Hubert Witheford and Pat Wilson, who both ended up in England. But beyond the literary figures, and technicalities of poetry writing, we find interesting essays on the artist Louise Henderson, and Stead’s extraordinary encounters with the legend of Barry Humphries and a number of his wives. There is also a lot of depth on the generation of male professors who dominated the humanities at Auckland University, and some more on their wives.
For those of us interested in humanities, and especially political history, Stead’s blog posts on the ‘Sinclair Cohort’ and the ‘1922 Brigade’, or the three K.S.s, are fascinating. The other two K.S.s are Keith Sinclair (History) and Kendrick Smithyman (English); while Bob Chapman (Politics) and the writer Maurice Duggan also feature. Helen Clark makes a fleeting appearance, as a badminton playing partner, and in the coterie around Chapman (which also includes the MP Roger Douglas). So there is certainly an intellectual milieu at work here, and one which was enormously influential in Labour Party machinations at the time, if not well-versed in socialist history, apart from Smithyman.
It is also worth mentioning the essay written for this volume, ‘Borges and Me’. A strange title, especially since it is about an American academic, Jay Parini, who wrote Borges and Me, about his time driving the poet Borges around Scotland while a PhD student. Stead had read Borges’ work in the late 1960s, and had also driven a poet around Scotland, Edwin Muir, but that was ten years prior. The connection seems to be that Parini was a draft-dodger, during the Vietnam War, and that period has been an obsession for Stead, culminating in his writing Smith’s Dream. While it was filmed as Sleeping Dogs, he views it as a literary failure (despite being a commercial success).
Stead’s short fiction often seems to include an ex-patriate New Zealand man, usually an academic, encountering great public figures in Europe. Indeed, in ‘Vladimir’, the character enjoys a car journey with Putin before arriving at a function attended by the English playwright Tom Stoppard, who was actually from Czechia. In Stead’s story ‘Philosopher’s Kiss’, his Kiwi academic has an encounter with the renowned Cambridge philosopher Wittgenstein, not long before his death, but it doesn’t seem very convincing. In ‘A Short History of New Zealand’ he has an ex-pat Kiwi journalist interview a younger female author about a book with that title, which is actually fiction. And the fictional text is quoted at length as part of the story. It seems unlikely that this text, about a Pakeha policeman pursuing a Maori thief in a rural settlement, would have been published under that title and with all the expletives added, especially by a female author. Not now anyway, or perhaps that is the point?
But, of course, we can forgive C.K. Stead for some idiosyncratic fiction writing, and a fixation on his experiences in 1960s Britain, as he remains the last standing ‘Man of Letters’ from that period.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: Table Talk – Opinions, stories, and a play
Author: C.K. Stead
Publisher: Quentin Wilson Publishing
ISBN: 9781991103307
RRP: $45.00
Available: bookshops

Inner city Intrigue

21/11/2024

Love in Lockdown
by K. F. Fleming

Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to spend our 2020 lockdown with people you didn’t really like or even hardly knew?
In Oak Tree Lodge, a boutique central Auckland boarding house, on the eve of 25th March, 2020, three mismatched tenants – Roz, Frank and Julius – are preparing to spend the coming weeks in isolation from the rest of their quirky neighbourhood. Their only other companion is Leo, their landlord. He lives upstairs and, as we soon learn, he’s a pervert, delusional, and worse. There is a fourth room, but Chelsea went out 2 weeks ago and hasn’t come back. A few hours before lockdown begins, backpacker Meg turns up, desperate for somewhere to stay. Putting her in Chelsea’s room is a bonus for Leo – a last-minute opportunity to have a tenant in the best room in the house.
“Based on Real Events” claims the Love in Lockdown subtitle. Unless a series of inner-city murders were hushed up at the time, this statement thankfully only refers to the worries that people experienced during the pandemic; the tensions that developed in less-than-perfect relationships and the restrictions that were placed on personal freedom. The pandemic’s evolution in New Zealand and the lockdown regulations are reported accurately throughout.
Leo narrates the story. His cutting descriptions of Roz, Frank and Julius contrast with his rose-tinted relationship with Meg. This latter is sharply offset by other, more personal and disturbing details that he shares with us. His chatty narration is easy to read but his dark, apparently throw-away revelations mean that a sense of growing danger pervades the weird, strained atmosphere in the boarding house.
Despite the seemingly bizarre storyline, Fleming’s pithy writing, interspersed with irony and humour, has created an entertaining read with the final pieces in the puzzle only falling into place in the final pages.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: Love in Lockdown
Author: K F Fleming
Publisher: UK Small Publisher
ISBN: 9781916613102
RRP: $29.95
Available: bookshops

Magnificent record, fitting tribute and work of art

14/11/2024

Force of Nature
Te Aumangea o te Ao Tūroa
A conservation history of Forest & Bird 1923-2023
by David Young, Naomi Arnold
with Caroline Wood, Michael Pringle

How do you review a book like this, given that its 364 pages of text plus additional material contain more knowledge than one can hope to absorb in weeks of reading?
To begin with, it’s an admirable tour de force by the Forest & Bird Society, and no doubt also a labour of love by the authors credited and many others who have contributed to put together this history of conservation in Aotearoa-New Zealand.
As is appropriate, the volume is physically beautiful – large format hardback, on quality paper, lavishly illustrated by photos. It would be a glib assessment for anyone to term it a coffee-table book though it would certainly grace any such table, because it is so much more than that.
Thousands of New Zealanders will find within its pages satisfaction not only at learning more of the work of Forest & Bird, but finding acknowledgement of how much has been given in terms of time, resources and expertise by so many citizens over the past hundred years.
Growing up the daughter of one of its avid members and volunteer workers dedicated to the principles the Society stands for, I thought I was reasonably familiar with at least part of its work during those years, but this book puts that mere slice of background into much wider perspective with a full account of the aims and achievements since its beginnings.
In fact, the account starts prior to 100 years ago for the first society of that name was formed in 1914. The opening chapter deals with the early history of the Society, paying tribute to those foresighted people who recognized more than a century ago the desirability and need to protect this country’s natural resources.
Personally for me, it was a joy to read particularly in Chapter 2, Protection’s Voice in a Post-War Economy, of people I knew in my childhood, many of them met at family camps held between 1953 and 1983 – professional and amateur experts in our unique environment, active members and supporters of the Society in their time, now all gone.
Chapter 3, Breakthrough: Islands as Sanctuaries will be where even more readers find much to spark their memories or create interest as it records the wonderful work done by countless New Zealanders to establish sanctuaries for birds and other native species on islands around our coasts. This book then, also serves to pay tribute to their contributions.
Likewise, Chapter 4, Our Reflective Past: Rivers, Wetlands and Lakes, records the prodigious efforts of workers and volunteers to overcome threats to such treasures as Manapouri, Whanganui River and other natural taonga.
Chapter 5, Defining the Bush: Claiming Our Wilderness continues the account of the work done by the Society from 1973 to 2002; followed by Coming of Age: Legislation as Revolution 1980-2023.
And that’s just the first half of the volume. Further sections deal with the marine environment, the ongoing work to make this country predator-free, the effects of human-caused pressures, then looking forward to the future.
Full endnotes, acknowledgements and an index complete the work.
Complementing this impressive and beautiful book are plenty of illustrations, some honouring people who contributed so much to the Society and to whom much is owed for their work, plus stunning photos of places, flora and fauna.
Altogether, Force of Nature is a magnificent record, and a fitting tribute to all involved, past and present. It is also a work of art.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: Force of Nature, Te Aumangea o te Ao Tūroa
A conservation history of Forest & Bird
Authors: David Young, Naomi Arnold with Caroline Wood, Michael Pringle
Publisher: Potton & Burton
ISBN: 9781988550701
RRP: $90
Available: https://shop.forestandbird.org.nz; NZ bookshops

Cannot be praised enough

7/11/2024

Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art
by Deidre Brown & Ngarino Ellis,
with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki

WOW! What a beautiful monster of a book. Not solely through its massive weight and plenitude of pages, but more significantly – indeed far more significantly – because of its inherent kaupapa. He aha tēnā? To comprehensively present, for the first time, an encyclopaedic overview of all the many interrelated and interpolated aspects of Māori artistic endeavour from pre-European times to the present and the inchoate future.
Accordingly and inevitably, it is so mighty a tome because Māori have always had at the forefront of such endeavour, whether it be whakairo, moko, raranga, kākahu, whatu, te mea te mea te mea, these as integral living components of everyday life whereby past, present and future are not linear concepts but are a holistic always-current and interwoven panoply. As such, because there is just so much material to present – via cogent and sometimes cutting commentaries concerning Pākeha appropriation of ngā toi Māori, and via a myriad of coloured plates and photographs – the volume is gargantuan.
This vital volume is divided into three key sections, and several subsections within each of these. Te Kete Tuatea equates to pre-European customary artistan involvement. Te Kete Tuauri relates to the inevitable adjustment age and stage when European arrival and disruption and what I can only call larceny, seismically shifted Indigenous qua Māori creations and creativity. Te Kete Aronui relates to more recent times, events and exhibitions and continues to amplify what for me will happen with an increasing and necessary frequency, and that is international recognition of ngā toi Māori katoa as sui generis, and as intrinsically important. With this masterpiece and as the three kaituhi-kaitiaki articulate in their Whakamutunga/Conclusion they have already gifted the world comprehensive evidence of a ‘global domination of Māori art history’.
I amplify this last statement by pointing out that the authors forcefully stress that ngā toi Maōri in several variegated formats, is suffused by three consistent themes, namely whenua, tikanga, whakapapa. For me, as so expertly evidenced in this book, it is an expression of an entirely different Weltanschauung, albeit ongoingly modified over decades, that Māori are existentially authentic and original and must be accorded this elemental fact. As here stressed by the key progenitor of this years-long project, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, when delineating (Māori) Indigeneity, ‘whose identity is unique and defined by the geographical compass within which they operate, and ancient and ancestral ties to place’. Ko te pono tēnā.
Obviously then, I cannot praise this magnum opus enough. It is essential reading and will remain for me he taonga into which I will continue to dip and delve and always learn from. For example, I now know about another harbinger Māori, Pauline Kahurangi Yearbury, ‘the first Maōri fine arts academic’. As a marked counterpoint I gleaned more about ‘Fakes in the collection’ when non-Māori profited grandly by producing counterfeit ‘Māori art’. Relatedly, I garnered more insight pertaining to the heinous trade in toi moko and kōiwi tangata, and trust that Toi Te Mana is causative in the return of the over 600 ancestors ‘still waiting to come home’. Here. Where they belong.
Tēnā koutou katoa mō tēnei pukapuka. He taonga waiwai. Ka maharatia tēnei e ahau taea noatia tōku matenga.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana
(Te Ātiawa)

Title: Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art
Authors: Deidre Brown, Ngarino Ellis, with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409197
RRP: $99.99
Available: bookshops

Mix of fantasy and familiar

14/10/2024

The Dangers of Being Brave & True
By J.M. Goldie

First, the title intrigues with its promises of action and moral dilemma. Right at the beginning of your reading, though, it takes on more significance as you learn Brave and True are the names of the two main characters, unknown to each other till they are thrown together in a remote location alien to them both.
Brave and True are young – just coming into their own as mages. True attends a secret boarding school learning skills in the magical arts. This may sound familiar and one could look for similarities with Hermione and Harry, but the world of Avalonia is far removed from Hogwarts in place and time.
The story develops quickly, revealing many tropes of fantasy and science fiction literature – spells, superpowers, kingdoms lost to unscrupulous usurpers, wormhole-style portals that transport between worlds. Add to those, flying horses and pigs.
J M Goldie has conjured much besides, in her imagination. The technology of this world’s Web is contrasted with the nature-based Web of Avalonia; the principle of natural balance being a recurring motif.
Her writing style is easy to read with colloquial language, references, and particularly dialogue geared to the YA target readership who will find this a most acceptable mixture of fantasy and familiar, with drama lightened by age-appropriate humour. But its appeal isn’t limited to that age-group so many adults will also find it a satisfying read.
For all who do, the story of Brave and True continues in a follow-up title.

Review by Alderaan Hoth

Title: The Dangers of Being Brave & True
Author: J.M. Goldie
Publisher: MCP (Massive Crush Press)
ISBN: 978-1-7385955-7-0
RRP: $25
Available: Amazon (eBook and paperback); paperback direct from the author at www.jmgoldie.com; or request from your bookstore.

Hauntingly heartbreaking

27/9/2024

Iconoclasm
by David Coyle

Don’t be deceived by Iconoclasm’s slimness. Yes, it is only 122 pages and yes, you can read it in one sitting and will probably want to, but it is no inconsequential read. Long after I had put it down, Thomas stayed with me, along with the story’s enduring backdrop of snow falling in Wellington.
It’s an October evening and uncharacteristically snowing when Thomas “pushes back tears” and leaves his office in Lambton Quay. In a pub in Cuba Street, we learn that he earns little more than the minimum wage – a stout costs “about half an hour’s work, after tax”. So begins a kaleidoscopic night that will take Thomas from Cuba Street’s bright lights and night people to a filthy flat in Newton “in dire need of being torn down”, Oriental Bay and finally home to Island Bay.
Along the way, we learn that Thomas is kind, a young man who comforts Kate, a tearful older woman in the pub, but we don’t yet know why their conversation unduly saddens him. An unwelcome encounter with Baz, an alcoholic, P-wrecked busker leads Thomas reluctantly back to the Newton flat of his student days – anything it seems is an excuse for not hurrying home tonight. Ten years on, it is still home to his university flatmates, wallowing in their failed lives, dealing drugs or permanently wasted: he is the only one who didn’t drop out after the first year.
Why then is Thomas so unhappy? It’s page 105 before we find out, and that’s as it should be. However, knowing why means that a second reading of Iconoclasm sharpens the reader’s awareness. Kate’s comments about ecology and extinction, “We create, we destroy; we make, we unmake” is, on second reading, not just conservationist-speak, but also a stab into the heart of Thomas’s sorrow. And there are more clues, twisting the knife, but they would be spoilers.
Having visited his website I wasn’t surprised to learn that Coyle is also a poet. Tightly written and rich in vivid descriptions and insights, Iconoclasm is a haunting story which will certainly repay a second read.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: Iconoclasm
Author: David Coyle
Publisher: Calaveras Press (self-published)
ISBN: 978-0-473-71545-8
RRP: $30
Available: Wellington independent bookstores (Unity Books, Marsden Books, The Undercurrent, Another Chapter, and Schrödinger’s Books)

Great and timely guide to te reo

20/9/2024

Ngā Hapa Reo Common Māori Language Errors
by Hona Black & Te Aorangi Murphy-Fell

He pukapuka pai rawa atu tēnei. This is a very good book. He aha ai? Why? Because it – across six sections – cogently sets out what the title expresses, namely common language errors made by people who speak and write te reo Māori, from novices, through to experienced veterans.
It is also a frustrating book, precisely because it is so cogent and well-organised. Why? Because it pointedly, through several examples per error, displays exactly how te reo Māori should be articulated, and it brought home to me, for example, that I continue to make mistakes, especially with ‘Errors in the postponed particle’ (section four), while I am still not good at incorporating correctly some of the appropriate grammar outlined in section two. This concise resource, then, while a treasure is also – for me at least – rather riling because I realise when reading through it, that I do make several of the errors!
All the more rationale to deleve into Ngā Hapa Reo every day, eh!
Now, there is also something key that the authors stress, and that is the rather pernicious influence that te reo Ingarihi (English language) has had and continues to have on te reo Māori. Something I have consistently stated for a long time, as I am a strong critic of the ongoing linguistic imperialism brought about by agents of the English language on Indigenous tongues globally and have written extensively about this.
Thus, Black and Murphy-Bell in their section three, articulate the following about errors caused by the influence of English on Māori, ‘These errors originate from the English language and its associated Western ways of thinking, where Māori speakers have taken these thoughts and translated them. We could probably say that the thinking is English, the world view is English, the stucture is English, but the language of communication is Māori’ – resulting in an incorrect language structure. A specific example of this tenet?
Put your shoes on
Incorrect: Purua ō hū ki runga
Correct: Kuhuna ō hū
As the authors state about such an inaccuracy, ‘This error is also one that highlights a Pākehā thought or structure being conveyed in Māori’. Because the verb ‘kuhu’ means ‘to put on’ and there is no need for another or additional ‘on’. Te tika!
Finally here, there is also a valuable appendix to this litany of common errors, whereby macrons (ngā tohutō) are carefully ascribed – or not – to over 100 words, whereby some words do not have macrons yet are still mistakenly granted them, while more words are utilised incorrectly because they should have these.
‘Tangohia tēnei pukapuka (Accept this book).’ It is a great and timely companion to my copy of Complete Manual of Māori Grammar and Conversation, revised and enlarged edition by A.T. Ngata, who also succinctly expresses my own actions now with regard to Black and Murphy-Fell’s pedagogic gem, with ‘Kotahi anō tāku ako i ia rā, i ia rā (I take a lesson every day).’
He kahurangi. Tēnā kōrua.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

Title: Ngā Hapa Reo Common Māori Language Errors
Author: Hona Black & Te Aorangi Murphy-Fell
Publisher: Oratia Books
ISBN: 978-1-99-004259-1
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops, www.oratia.co.nz

Art book celebrates extraordinary women artists

13/9/2024

Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa
by Kirsty Baker

From Rita Angus to Merata Mita, Fiona Clark to Mataaho Collective, Sight Lines tells the story of art made by women in Aotearoa.
This is an important book that celebrates painters, weavers, sculptors, photographers, poets, activists, textile artists and performers.
    The substantial text-heavy book of 430 pages celebrates 35 extraordinary women artists from Aotearoa. It includes over 150 illustrations and is written by art historian and curator, Dr Kirsty Baker from Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). Baker is the perfect person to write this book as her thesis through Victoria University of Wellington — Te Herenga Waka, ‘Constituting the “Woman Artist”: A Feminist Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Art History 1928–1989’ —  was awarded a place on the prestigious Doctoral Dean’s List for 2020.
   In a recent interview with NZ Booklovers, Baker was asked what inspired her to write the book. “I’m interested in the shortcomings and exclusions of feminisms, and how we can go about trying to rectify them…I find art itself to be endlessly inspiring so in fundamental terms it was art, and the artists who make it, that really inspired the book”.
Sight Lines includes contributions by Chloe Cull (Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Te Ruahikihiki), Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), Ioana Gordon-Smith (Faleula, Le’auva’a, Pākehā), Rangimarie Sophie Jolley (Waikato-Tainui), Lana Lopesi, Hanahiva Rose (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Toa), Huhana Smith (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga) and Megan Tamati-Quennell (Te Āti Awa, Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) adding a depth of knowledge and perspective.
   Examples of these are; Wāhine Māori and the Worlds of Adornment: He toi rākai, he mana wāhine, he mana tāngata – by the arts of adornment, there is the prestige of women and all people, by Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou); Ka Whawhai Tonu Mātou: The revolution reflected by the work of Robyn Kahukiwa, by Rangimarie Sophie Jolley (Waikato-Tainui); and ‘We were making art, which is what we always wanted to do’: Elizabeth Ellis and Mere Lodge, by Chloe Cull (Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Te Ruahikihiki).
Throughout Sight Lines there are three major thematic threads, focusing on how women artists have whanaungatanga (relationships) with whenua (land) and how they express themselves through their art. The second, the term woman itself, is reflected upon in the ways that woman pushed against gendered barriers. Lastly, the thread of speaking back, by looking at the ways that artists have used their practice to speak back to the exclusions and limitations of art history and art institutions.
   I found the protest theme a fascinating read. On page 184, Baker writes,          “Currents of protests and resistance have always been embedded in artistic practice in Aotearoa. By unpicking this rich seam, we can trace the myriad ways in which the visual, visceral and emotive power of art-making has been harnessed to illuminate urgent socio-political concerns”.
The book has been warmly received. But there has been some debate about the women included and omitted in Sight Lines. Baker stated in an interview on RNZ National Radio, “An attempt on a complete history of women’s art history is doomed to fail”. Clearly not all New Zealand artists can be included, but I was surprised that Gretchen Albrecht CNZM, painter and sculptor, Ans Westra CNZM and Fiona Pardington MNZM, photographers, Kura Te Waru-Rewiri, artist, academic and educator, Raukura Turei, painter and architect and Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck, a Tongan interdisciplinary artist were not included. In her defense, Baker said, “I didn’t want to include artists without their permission and participation from them and or their whanau”.
   Sight Lines has a luxurious fabric book cover with the image body/house in pride of place, by visual artist, poet and film-maker Joanna Margaret Paul. The extensive index, artist notes and detailed glossary adds value to the book.
   Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa, is an excellent asset for any library, school or personal book collection. An inspirational and informative read to motivate future generations of New Zealand artists and to understand their history and what has motivated their work.

Review by Renee Hollis

Title: Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa
Author: Kirsty Baker
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409982
RRP: $69.99
Available: bookshops

Clear colourful illustrations in children’s book

6/9/2024

Beau and the Stone Giant
by Hydie Balle-Hands
illustrated by Audee Halim

A quest, an adventure, and three keen young dogs equipped with swords – all elements in this picture book that will captivate youngsters for the vitality of the story.
Adding to the appeal are some less usual creatures – a stone giant, a friendly flying tuatara, ferocious flying fish in a merciless sea, and a bad dragon guarding a special harakeke on Whispering Mountain.
The text is mainly in rhyming couplets, with altering metre, and the vocabulary will need some interpretation for most little ones, so this works better for an adult-to-child reader rather than as a self-read for children themselves.
A mixture of New Zealand and foreign elements in the text and illustrations broadens its reach to a wider audience.
The book is beautifully presented on high quality paper, with the clear and colourful illustrations by Audee Halim more than supporting the text.

Review by Emily R

Title: Beau and the Stone Giant
Author: Hydie Balle-Hands; Illustrator Audee Halim
Publisher: Beau Books
ISBN: 978-0-473-71786-5
RRP: $22.99
Available: Paperback: selected stores and online from www.beaubooks.co.nz;
online at wheelers.co.nz; Ebook: Amazon Kindle, Apple Books