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Full of practical information

25/11/2019

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The 50 Best Birdwatching Sites In New Zealand
by Liz Light


The text says this book is “a very well organized love story devoted to our feathered friends which, when one really watches them, their habits, acrobatics and prettily patterned feathers, will brighten the dullest of days.”
    As well as explaining the intention, this sentence gives an indication of the writing throughout – non-technical, chatty, reflecting a passion for the bird-life of this country.
    Another thing that must be said about “50 Best Birdwatching Sites” is that it is full of practical information.  
   The opening section, 56 pages, gives a background on wider relevant topics – geography and climate, seabirds, shorebirds, terrestrial birds, habitats, and threats to bird survival. A handy glossary gives Maori, English and scientific names of each of the species.

    The bulk of the book delivers what the title promises, giving descriptions and details of 50 places every birdwatcher will want to visit. North to south, they are spread throughout Aotearoa, from Iripiri Project Island Birdsong in Bay of Islands, to Ulva Island off Stewart Island. The east has not been neglected, with two entries covering Chatham and Pitt islands.
    For each of the sites there’s a general explanation, description of the tracks and walks, the birdlife to be found, as well as a section of key facts giving practical information including, as relevant, best time to visit, activities, whether to take food in the case of no nearby shops, accommodation and camping sites, even how far it is from a petrol station.
    Each has several colour photos, of the location, natural features, and bird inhabitants. These are all high quality – most taken by either the author or Oscar Thomas.
    In fact, the quality of the whole production is very good – high grade paper, photo reproduction and clear text. A wider gutter would be preferable as this is a tightly-bound book. Maps and an index make it an even more useful and informative work to be kept handy for reference, to inspire an itinerary for your next holiday, or a very nice gift for anyone with an interest in our native birds.

Review by Paua Blue
Title: The 50 Best Birdwatching Sites In New Zealand
Author: Liz Light.  
Publisher: John Beaufoy Publishing
ISBN: 9781912081493
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

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Lavish work on Oceanic people

11/11/2019

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Always Song in the Water
by Gregory O'Brien


This is a coffee-table book, given the smaller perimeter dimensions are not the usual for such.
    But the lavish artwork, photography and page quality all qualify as one, as does the somewhat laid-back dip-your-toes-into-anytime quality the tome emanates throughout.
    The pages are divided into two parts. Both rambling through and across the author’s historical travelling adventures up North (of Aotearoa New Zealand) in the first, more readable as more sequential section, while the more discursive second section adumbrates his several escapades offshore of what we generally envisage as this skinny country. The latter includes his life-changing voyaging to its further dominions, such as the Kermadecs: Raoul Island in particular.
    Water, water is indeed everywhere and there is plenty to imbibe in all the aquatically-drenched references, sketches, paintings, poems, quotations, reflections, droll anecdotes, quirky descriptions, name-drops as pertaining. 
O’Brien’s main, significant thesis is that this country is far more than its two island plus cartographic designation and rather contains a much more massive sea mass, which
   s t  r  e t  c  h e  s   well beyond our usual ken and which calls for a far wider ontological and environmentally-friendly orientation, even beyond this country.  In disturbing our metaphysics of place via this heady concoction of visceral quick snapshot-like sections, he has us ingurgitating on a whole new cocktail, best summed up in his own words, 

   Instead of drawing a hard and fast line around Aotearoa New Zealand, the realm might be the start of a great opening out and enlargement, an immense fluidity and state of flux, with ‘meeting and parting’ aplenty…then we can continue outwards towards an encompassing, embracing notion of broader Oceanic identification. 
    His is not a new thought, being already set forth by Alice Te Punga Sommerville in her excellent Once Were Pacific (2012) and obviously experienced, of course, by my own tupuna as they travelled in Tokomaru waka towards these shores so many years previously. But it remains a worthwhile lodestar with which to sail into our global futures together. Indeed, O’Brien’s print and paint paean is suffused in religiosity, so that by the end of this rather weighty sermon of over 270 pages, he quotes Blake and concludes, ‘That all humanity’s endeavours, on land as on sea, might be prefaced by such a statement.’ Namely - ‘everything that lives is holy.’
    Including – among a ramshackle raft of others - Dargaville, Ralph Hotere, the Chathams, John Pule - and Marilyn Monroe, who floats a quirky lap or three.
    So, go on take the plunge. If you can find the funds, this book swims rather well.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana
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Autobiographical tale a delight

4/11/2019

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​Mophead: How Your Difference Makes a Difference
by Selina Tusitala Marsh


I admit to having been a little behind the times in some areas, which made me expect graphic books were still more comic-like. With limp covers, pages of cheap quality paper, strips of cartoon-style drawings on each page. 
    Wrong, wrong, wrong in the case of this one, for here’s a hardcover, heavy rather than flimsy pages, each with a single drawing and a few words of text. More like a children’s picture book, though the full colours of picture books have been replaced by black and red only. 
    And this tells a story better appreciated by older children, certainly teens, and adults too.
    Dedicated “to those who stick out”, it’s an autobiographical tale written and illustrated by Poet Laureate for the past two years, Selina Tusitala Marsh. She credits her mop of hair “so wild it defied gravity” to her mixed parentage – Samoan, Tuvaluan, Scottish, English and French. I’m thinking she was also well-named by her parents for this Tusitala shows she is not only a great writer of poetry but of stories too, as well as an artist. 
    With a few well-chosen words and delightfully simple cartoon pics, the young Selina’s school experiences trying to blend in despite her unruly mop is both hilarious and affecting. It’s a school visit by another wild-haired poet that is inspirational for the young girl. It challenges her perspective and sets her free from the restraints of conformity. Academic success, honours, national and international acclaim follow in spite of the mop of wild hair. Or perhaps partly because of it?
    In telling her story Selina Tusitala Marsh has been generous in her acknowledgement of other writers, poets, and high-achieving Pacific Island women.
    Altogether, this book is a delight – to hold, to read, to see, and to learn from.
    Malo lava for this and all your achievements, Dr Marsh.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore
Title: Mophead: How Your Difference Makes a Difference
Author: Selina Tusitala Marsh
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408985
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

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