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A lovely fun book

27/7/2019

There’s a Hedgehog in My Pants
by Amy Harrop & Ross Kinnaird

An engrossing title, that’s for sure, but what a draw card!
A story about a hedgehog in a little boy’s pants is certain to rock the socks off many other little boys.
It’s certainly a novel plot, and a catchy title for this picture book.
The focus is initially on the hedgehog dilemma; but where did it come from? There’s no way the boy can sit on a sofa or a chair, no way, it would appear, to dislodge this animal. The boy tries to dance it out, to shake it out and even to tempt it out with some yummy food dangling from a stick, but no... The hedgehog seems quite content to stay put where it is warm and comfortable.
However, the boy works through the problem, solving the unwelcome guest in his pants problem and the story ends with a win/win kindness.
It’s a lovely fun book.
Right from the first line, the key words are in bold type. This is a great way to help the reader emphasise that specific word and for the child listener to recognise it and join in.
The artwork is fun and robust, and even without the narrative the story flows along without a hitch.
It is suitable for both boys and girls.

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: There's a Hedgehog in My Pants
Author: Amy Harrop & Ross Kinnaird
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 9781775435655
RRP: $18.99
Available: bookshop

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Novel merits close attention

22/7/2019

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Melt
by Jeff Murray

This is a novel that works well at different levels and one that merits close attention, particularly as it has as its core theme the greatest current threat to humanity’s survival.
At one level it is a simple but harrowing tale, set in the near future, of a young Pacific Island woman whose homeland is being overcome by rising sea levels. She has been charged with advocating for her people, twenty thousand of them, in dealings with the New Zealand government over negotiations for resettlement here.
Her story unfolds in a wider world beset by troubles caused by climate change. A hundred million refugees from its effects are desperately seeking a place to re-settle. Three major northern hemisphere powers – The United States, China and India – are manoeuvring for advantage in Antarctica, where the ice is gradually retreating and old agreements restricting the exploitation of resources are being abandoned.
These great powers are all looking to establish close and dominant relationships with southern hemisphere countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa, so that they can establish large-scale bases in readiness for exploiting the great southern continent as the thaw makes it increasingly habitable and its resources more readily exploitable. Meanwhile, most of Europe is turning inwards, Russia is concentrating on establishing its dominance in the Arctic regions, and the United Kingdom has aligned itself with India.
Against this background the author gives us a kaleidoscope of motives operating amongst the various interests involved. There is greed and envy, fanaticism and arrogance, and an occasional glimpse of altruism. There is also subterfuge, and there are friendships that might not be friendships at all. Yet these features are related in a way that is not in the least hysterical. Indeed, it all seems almost mundanely inevitable, as so much that is described is little more than a continuation of what we see happening today.
The big issues emerge out of the narrative; out of the journeys of the young woman protagonist as she meets with New Zealand politicians, sails with eco-activists as they attempt to disrupt Japanese whaling ships, and finally travels to Antarctica to see for herself what is happening there and to discover whether it is perhaps here that her people can find a new home for themselves. The biggest issue of all is the conflict between the necessity for whole-hearted co-operation if humanity is to have a future at all, and geo-political rivalries, competing systems, and selfish ambitions.
The Antarctic itself can be seen as an emerging new world in the broadest sense – a last chance for humanity to redeem itself and establish a society that respects all of its kind and all its fellow earth dwellers and the earth itself. Indeed, there is much in this novel that can be interpreted as being allegorical.
Yet no definitive solutions to the problems raised are offered. In this sense, the novel is not polemical. In essence, it is a tragedy concerning a young woman doing what she can or feels she must do to allow her threatened people a future; a tragedy acted out against forces, both natural and human, that are far beyond her power to control.
This is an important book and one that provokes thought and a sense of urgency. The world it depicts could well be just around the corner. It is an intensely disturbing novel that even raises doubts as to whether or not humankind are worth saving at all; but it is also an engrossing read.

Review by Tony Chapelle

Title: Melt
Author: Jeff Murray
Publisher: Mary Egan Publishing
ISBN: 9780473470531
RRP: $35.00
Available: print:www.jeffmurraybooks.com; http://www.unitybooksonline.co.nz/nz-fiction/nz-fiction/Melt
ebook:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S46BW9W

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Intriguing tale for young readers

17/7/2019

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Tails
by W J Scott

Time and place – that of wizards, castles, magic. Most magical beasts, however, have disappeared – dragon, unicorn, and phoenix among them.
But Silvertails, though thought by humans and wizards to be extinct, still survive.
Silvertails are small 4-legged creatures, cat-like with long tails and pink or purple fur. Or maybe they’re closer to dogs, in that they bark and howl and live in packs. They’re vegetarian, talk, can understand human speech, and have abilities beyond those of other animals.
Their tails are the repository of super senses, known as tail-sense. So what happens when a young male, Kywah, loses his in an encounter with hunters? Taillessness is more than merely the lack of an appendage in Silvertail society – it puts Kywah, and his pack, in danger from their enemies – hunters who sell pelts of all animals, and magicians who are desperate to obtains the magical qualities of the Silvertail’s fur, particularly their tails.
For the sake of the pack, Kywah must undertake a hazardous mission that involves chases, intrigue, with several groups in contention – all of which must be outrun by this gutsy but tailless Silvertail.
This is Book 1 of the Silver Wishes series for young readers. It ends on a satisfying note while pointing to the pack’s further adventures to come.
It is well-written and includes some illustrations.
Will I watch for Book 2? Yes, indeed.

Review by Emily R

Title: Tails
Author: WJ Scott
Publisher: Wendy Scott Books
ISBN: 978-0-473-47117-0
RRP: $15 CopyPress; RealNZBooks https://shop.realnzbooks.co.nz/shopn/spi/books_15973
Amazon US paperback $13.99
Available: Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078FX66QD and as above

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Superb in every detail

5/7/2019

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Ake Ake Kia Kaha E! Forever Brave – B Company 28 (Maori) Battalion 1939–1945
by Wira Gardiner

This is a monumental book in several ways. To begin with, its size quite sets it apart from any other war history this reviewer has read, for at 449 pages and weighing 2.2 kg, reading it on one’s knee is an invitation to an interrupted blood supply so that one is tempted to suggest that this coffee-table book might well replace the coffee table in its entirety.
     However, and less facetiously, the book’s presentation is superb in every detail from beautifully-crafted endpapers through pages of sumptuous glossiness and a text superbly supported by images that, while containing their fair share of photographs that one would expect in a regimental history, more than occasionally go beyond that to throw up striking and timeless illustrations of what it means to be a Maori warrior. When that happens, the experience is akin to seeing a ray of sunlight pick out a salient feature of the landscape.
     This begins on the page facing the Foreword with the totally arresting image of Hupa Hamiora pouring his spirit into the battalion’s tug-of-war team in leading a spontaneous haka; it continues through pictures of bayonet drill of understated lethality and Bren gunners who radiate a calm and practised precision in laying down fire, all the way to the picture of an un-named soldier in the Western Desert posing with a bayonet and a huge and toothless grin. To this reviewer, these images synthesise the way in which 28 (Maori) Battalion took men from backgrounds that were usually underprivileged, often educationally-deprived and more often than not economically challenged and overcame problems that ranged from fitting Maori feet into Pakeha-made boots to training ill-educated agricultural labourers for warfare in a technical age. All driven by the ‘way of the warrior’ that turned the Battalion into a fighting-force greatly admired by the legendary ‘Desert Fox’, Erwin Rommel, himself one of the 20thcentury’s greatest warriors.
     The book owes much to JF Cody’s official history of the parent organisation, 28 (Maori) Battalion, but that is inevitable. Where it is different is in its presentation to the niche market of the heartland of Te Arawa and Mataatua, and it offers an account of these men’s war that is comprehensive to the point, sometimes, of detracting from the narrative flow in order to detail who did what, with whom and when. Again, however, the book’s positioning for a specific market almost guarantees this, and anyone seeking the ‘broad sweep’ still has Cody’s excellent history available.
     Gardiner’s decision to background ‘B’ Company’s war story in the social and economic milieu of its participants is an outstanding part of the book, as is his treatment of 28 Battalion’s efforts to keep alive the manaof the ‘greatest tauain history’ in post-war years. He neither shirks nor sweeps under the rug the less pleasant aspects of the Company’s story: the PTSD, the treatment, even from their own comrades, of PoWs, problems of rehabilitation and the differentiated social and economic treatment accorded returned men.
     What might have been done better? The short answer is: very little. However, the work might have been enhanced by more searching content-editing. There are a number of non-sequitursthroughout, as well as places where one story is interrupted by another; and two examples occur in Chapter 4 ‘Greece’, where the narrative is interrupted by a sizeable account of what captured officers did in captivity within Germany, and again in Chapter 6  ‘The Home Front’ which is much more concerned with troop movements than its advertised content. Large-scale maps that feature restricted areas are also an irritant especially in the seminal battles of Crete and the Western Desert because these are where the weapon that was ‘B’ Company and its parent was forged.
     However the critical eye is less important to this wonderful book than the size of the lump in the throat when reading of the carnage of Takrouna among ‘B’ Company’s officers and NCOs, or the devastation wrought by the Gazala battle among whole home communities in ‘B ‘Company’s recruiting area, or the fact that the battle for the Cassino railway station took 74% of the Company’s strength and left it but one officer. Neither is the size of that lump diminished by the unrewarded exploits of the Manahis and the Horopaperas, nor the suffering of the Wikiriwhis. In the context of the understated bravery that is really understated heroism, it is fitting that Gardiner and his fine team not only include a Roll of Honour for the fallen but a photograph of every man of ‘B’ Company that they could find.
     In all ways and all things, these men and their comrades more than lived up to the accolade bestowed on their Queenite forebears of the Arawa Constabulary almost a century before: Te Arawa piri pono. ‘The Arawa: loyal and true.’

Review by MJ Burr

Title: Ake Ake Kia Kaha E! Forever Brave - B Company 28 (Maori) Battalion 1939–1945
Author: Wira Gardiner
Publisher: Bateman Books
ISBN: 978 -1-86953-985-6
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

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Narrative of total faith

1/7/2019

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The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage
by Amy Leigh Wicks

These poems are a journey from one geographical place to another – New York to New Zealand – and from one spiritual place to another, “home” in both cases. Wicks uses a range of poetic forms that match the scope of her journey: villanelles, sestina, haiku, sonnets, for starters. There are devotional forms – canticles and psalms, and prose poems labelled as ‘log notes’. As befits work by a poet born at St Vincent’s Hospital, there are syllabics lurking in corners, not quite visible.
Of course, at the beginning we don’t know what the story will be:

Who doesn’t hope
for a fishing net
to come heavy
from the water with
an old locked box
caught in the net?

You might ask
how did the box
swim into the net?
And I might say

that is between
  the box and me.     (‘Loretta’ p 7)

Enter love. Enter changes in landscapes, feelings, and tastes. ‘Paysage moralisé’ is inspired by Auden’s sestina of the same name, a sensual riff on islands, cities, love and food, ending:
The mountains
out west are pink and gold in the morning. No mountains
are here. Manhattan, Staten, my beautiful dirty islands
are not his. He does not know my sorrow
or my happiness but he knows how to hold me. Jersey City
is lit up across the water
almost beautiful. I might be unravelling.

We are floating on the water
when the sun comes up slowly, heavily –
we are drifting further and further from dry land.    (p 22)
Enter New Zealand, and enter new strangenesses. A kitchen haiku is called ‘When I halve them’ and says:
the purple veins blooming in yellow flesh
remind me that home is far          (p 35)
The devotional poems carry much of the weight of the book, and can’t really be done justice to in one review. I was enchanted by the rendering of ‘Psalm CXXXIX: In translation’.
Where could I go from your spirit?
How can I run from everywhere?

If I build a tower through the clouds into the gold
of heaven you will be there. If I fall asleep in the black
of hell, you will be there, resting cool beside me.

If I lift off from the cliffs with the gulls, and my body
rests at the bottom of the sea, your hand will reach
for mine, your hand will pull me toward yourself.   (p 61)
I had a mild pang losing ‘the wings of the morning’ (though gulls do swoop better) but was happy to see Wicks drop the lines on hatred that appear in the kosher versions of the psalm.
And while we’re on tradition, ‘Ritual’ gives us the truly awesome thought of an earthquake (we are in Kaikōura now) during a Passover seder, as the door opens for Elijah:
The house trembles, a few books fall from the shelf
and Vivienne swears before diving under her chair.
Everything is still again. Where is he?     (p 72)
I was trying to figure out a description for this collection – travel narrative? poetry of witness? devotions? – and the penny dropped: In The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage, Amy Leigh Wicks is giving us a contemporary Pilgrim’s Progress – 21st century language, 21st century landscape – and it’s a wonderful job. Don’t bother plotting the two works against each other: the 17th century is too long gone – but both present a narrative of total faith, written by a poet trusting this certainty to get them through life in a world that doesn’t always have enough space for this sort of thing.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage
Author: Amy Leigh Wicks
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1 86940 897
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

Comments

A lovely fun book

Novel merits close attention

Intriguing tale for young readers

Superb in every detail

Narrative of total faith

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