Blog Posts - Flaxroots Productions

Autobiographical tale a delight

4/11/2019

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 More like a children’s picture book, though the full colours of picture books have been replaced by black and red only.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

Vicarious visit to little gem of an island

28/10/2019

Whenua Hou – A New Land: The story of Codfish Island
by Neville Peat

It’s probably a very low proportion of New Zealanders who can pinpoint Codfish Island accurately without clues or prompting. Confession – I was one of them, even though I find I’ve been close, on my trip to Stewart Island. I now know it lies in Foveaux Strait, off the north-west coast of Stewart Island/Rakiura.
So why did I choose to read this book? For that very reason – getting to know somewhere new. It was a whenua hou to me.
Neville Peat’s book is beautifully produced. Coloured photos on most pages are of excellent quality, and the text presents essential information in easy prose. Since I probably will never get to this island myself it serves as a vicarious visit. And a very pleasant and informative one it turns out to be.
About the names – the author explains the island was called Codfish from the early 1800s by the resident sealers, and gained the name Whenua Hou (New Land) “as a result of the mixed-race settlement” that developed there. Along the way it’s had other names too – Maori and European.
So, this small island has a long history that deserves to be remembered, and this is told in the first four brief chapters.
It is also an important wildlife refuge – particularly known for the kakapo which is now recovering from threatened extinction status due to an active management programme by DOC and Ngai Tahu iwi, and the establishment of the Whenua Hou Nature Reserve.
In 79 pages Neville Peat explains all and his book is a fitting account and description of this little gem of an island. I’m grateful to him for being able to travel there and appreciate it in this way.

Review by Paua Blue

Title: Whenua Hou - A New Land The story of Codfish Island
Author: Neville Peat
Publisher: Dpt of Conservation/Whenua Hou Committee
ISBN: 978-1-98-851490-1
RRP: $25 + p&p
Available: whenuahoubook@gmail.com or phone +64 3 2348192 (Te Rūnanga o Ōraka Aparima office)

Get up and pull on your boots

18/10/2019

Day Walks in New Zealand – 100 best short tracks
By Shaun Barnett

This is a book to make you itchy.
Itchy to get up from your armchair, pull on your boots, and set out for a good walk.
Good walks is what this attractively-produced book is all about. There are 100 of them described – evenly distributed around the country. Fifty in each island North and South (South including Stewart Island).
Most have a 2-page spread, a few one only, each containing a map, description and coloured photos of excellent quality chosen to appeal to anyone with any degree of love for the outdoors.
As will most people, I expect, I immediately check out the entries for several of my favourite walks. On the basis of my experience I find them accurate, and informative in that I learn a few more facts – about the area and track’s history, tree and bird life.
I’m reminded of others all but forgotten over the passing years that I tell myself I must revisit, and am enticed by descriptions of great-sounding walks new to me that should be put on a must-do list.
This is not a small-format spiral-bound resource to be tucked into a backpack and referred to along the trail. With its larger-format it is designed to be more of a coffee-table book and it would make a good gift to anyone at all interested in this country’s natural scenic gems, whether or not they’re very active walkers.
Those who are enthusiastic hikers will likely feel a little envious of the author, Shaun Barnett, for the hundreds of hours he has spent on these 100 tracks, and no doubt many more. And grateful to him for his work in putting his top 100 together in this attractive high-quality volume.
Excuse me – I must get up, find my boots and scratch the itch.

Review by Kauri Wood

Title: Day Walks in New Zealand – 100 best short tracks
Author: Shaun Barnett
Publisher: Potton & Burton
ISBN:9781988550084
RRP:$49.99
Available: bookshops

Rural life to captivate youngsters

11/10/2019

My Kiwi Gumboots
by June Pitman-Hayes
Illustrated by Minky Stapleton;
Maori lyrics by Ngaere Roberts

Having just won my very first pair of Red Band gumboots at the Field Days, choosing this book was a no-brainer.
I soon discovered it’s a delightful read, with bold illustrations and font, and it’s potentially interactive with its rhyming verse and songs.
The rural and farming country life are depicted with references and pictures of pukeko, tractors, dogs, lambs being bottle-fed, kowhai, chooks, bees and ducks, and frogs, which should have all our youngsters captivated.
To some children, those unfamiliar with this lifestyle, it might be intriguing to see pictures of brown eggs since the majority of supermarket eggs are white. All of these images and more tweak my memories of my own rural childhood, growing up as a country girl around farms, and I cannot wait to share this book with my grandson, who will have the beauty of both lifestyles.
The aspirations of our little farm girl are simply to grow up and be big enough to have her own pair of Red Band gumboots, like her mum and dad have.
It’s a most enjoyable read and, added bonus, there’s a CD to sing along to in both English and Maori, with lyrics at the end of the book. And there’s also an extensive glossary.

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: My Kiwi Gumboots
Author: June Pittman-Hayes, Illustrated by Minky Stapleton
Publisher: Scholastic NZ
ISBN: 9781775435808
RRP: $19.99
Available: bookshops

Well worth collecting and supporting

5/10/2019

AUP New Poets 5
Carolyn de Carlo, Sophie van Waardenberg, Rebecca Hawkes
Edited by Anna Jackson

We’re all happy to see the resurrection of the AUP New Poets series, and long may it continue.
The new format is especially welcome: the older volumes looked a bit more elegant to me, but the new look under Anna Jackson’s guidance allows for more poems. Each of the three authors has the equivalent of a good chapbook, and it is a credit to Jackson that the three voices play so well off each other. We have a nature poet, a journalist-poet, and an introspective poet, each of them eloquent and aware of today’s fast-changing world, all careful observers but with very different priorities.
Carolyn DeCarlo’s first poem, ‘Spy Valley’, describes light and colour as primary sense, seen against a background of silence:
Mauve colours the sky over Spy Valley,
      churning a hazy film that deadens bones,
  holds things still and seep in its grip.
  Nothing moves, all is quiet,
   captive in the lush grey wash
   tingeing all the houses and fences
   and faces upturned to the sky.  (p3)
The poet is on a different plane to the upturned faces, and other poems continue the image of the poet looking at the world from a different perspective. ‘Winter Swimmers’ is a series of six poems placed separately through DeCarlo’s selection. It looks like a framework for the other poems; the first with this title begins with the poet floating on the surface:
We drift on the surface,
      obeying the currents, ...

      They have been before us,
      the winter swimmers, ...

      Our feet brush against their hair
      as we kick on,
      bending backward to flip
      over and over, never tiring.   (p8)
     In the next ‘Winter Swimmers’ (p 17) the poet is airborne, distant and bigger, telling us to ‘Watch the birds/diving down into their ears, the ascent just as abrupt’.   The third poem finds us in a house watching new ferns grow, ‘the old brown lengths hovering/ then sinking below.’ (p22). The sense of sinking continues until ‘We are in pieces,/ not limited by bodies/ of water and skin,’ (p28) and ‘we float up/ like plastic bags on the sea’. And in the final poem (p35), ‘this is when I think of trilobites’ inhabiting both the Cambrian seas and the present, the geological landscape being in two places at once, and releasing the poet’s imagination as ‘I lie on my own elaborate spine/ chanting for horseshoe crabs/ to grow horns’ (p35).
Sophie van Waardenberg is less introspective, bringing a journalist’s detail to her poems, as well as a strong sense of her personality and her relations with other people. ‘I don’t remember inviting you’ (p35) is conversational and with wonderful images:
        go away, well well away, take yourself through my doors
         and back into the sun. my body has had its funding cut
and is making you redundant. be offended, or don’t. fly
        to france, to california. tell me about it abstractly. wonder

at your luck. my body has a space inside it.
     a big space inside it. there it is clean and loud. soon
it will be full of pigeons like piazza san marco.
nobody will be taking any pictures but you.
‘Schön’ (p47) is a (possibly) straightforward love poem, lyrical and exuberant, ending:
               my girl lets the spring in through her hands
               she puts her hands over my ears and I remember how it feels

               it is nice and nice and nice
      Rebecca Hawke is in the front line of close-up environmental warfare, in her language and her sentiments. She plays with the visual structure of her poems, which reinforces her whatever-it-takes line of attack. She begins with ‘Primal scream practice’ (p65):
           This is the beginning of language          A planet
            huge and awful throwing itself at the nearest star
            and missing          Water gnawing toothlessly at the land

        ‘Add penetrant to preferred broadleaf herbicide & devastate the
            wildflowers’ centres on lupins, the plant kingdom’s answer to rabbits –
            pretty colours which are just as desirable as fluffy bunnies. (Not.)

‘If I could breed your cultivar I’d have you in my garden’ (p83) begins:
      I gripped your hand white-knuckled
      as we scuffed through beefy snowdrifts –
      dead magnolia blossom

      heaped on the pavement & going so greasy
      underfoot you slipped. ...

and ends
        ‘retchworthy but I kind of wanted it.’ ...
Another slimy petal

      windblown & useless. I preferred you
      quiet as a magnolia cutting, propped
      in a jar & dreaming up the tree you could be.

‘Death by nectar’ is a glorious soliloquy by a pitcher plant (p91), reminding us that the animal kingdom doesn’t have a monopoly on troublemakers. Its last stanza:

      Oh no
      I must close the lid on my crawling
      body restless for this honeytrap gullet
      these speckles of red and green shrieking
         stop and go at the same time
          as I surrender to syrup I
             must pray the pitcher
withers on its stalk
before I
disintegrate
entirely
The AUP new poets series is well worth collecting and supporting. If they are all as good as volume 5, I’m looking forward to more in the series – go AUP, and well done with this one.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: AUP New Poets 5
Authors: Carolyn de Carlo, Sophie van Waardenberg, Rebecca Hawkes. Edited by Anna Jackson
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409036
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

Guide to better understand yourself

30/9/2019

Wellbeing From Within
by Jeannette McCallum

It’s an attractive book physically – text printed clearly on quality paper, font size chosen to be read easily.
     The content is ordered into brief sections – a single line quotation, a paragraph, a page or two at most, so it’s easily digested. This is a book that can be picked up, a thought or observation absorbed in a spare moment in a busy life.
     The author, who has a Wellness practice where she gives natural therapy treatments, teaches yoga, and offers workshops in associated therapies, has collected pieces of wisdom from throughout the ages and shares it in the form of inspirational quotes and brief instruction.
     Wisdom from ancient masters such as Lao Tzu and Plato to contemporary figures like Sophie Loren and Steve Jobs sit comfortably on the pages.
     Sections included are – beginnings, self-study, attitudes, branching out, the big picture, values and boundaries, stumbling blocks, illness, understand your body, nurture your body, healing, mind and spirit.
     Simple techniques are given to combat life’s unideal feelings – worry, fear, anger, sadness, tension – and to improve symptoms of bodily disharmony including poor eyesight and digestion.
     This book may well prove to be a starting place for those who wish to better understand themselves – body, mind, and spirit.
     The text is largely jargon-free, but those with some life experience will gain more from it. Wellbeing From Within would make a good gift for a middle-aged friend.

Review by Meg

Title: Wellbeing From Within
Author: Jeannette McCallum
Publisher: Waihi Beach Wellness Clinic
ISBN: 9780473472788
RRP: $29.95 + postage
Available: https://www.waihibeachwellness.co.nz/book-sales/
kindle ebook $9.06 Available from Amazon

Captivating title, gorgeous illustrations

23/9/2019

Miniwings – Moonlight the Unicorn’s High Tea Hiccup
by Sally Sutton
Illustrated by Kirsten Richards

I couldn’t wait to open the covers of this book – the illustrations are simply gorgeous while the title is captivating, encouraging reader and listener participation.
I soon discovered that each winged mini-horse comes complete with its own personality, and colour. And then there are the hijinx that perfectly match that particular character. And each illustration of each Miniwing is distinctly different so kids will be fascinated by them and perhaps choose a favourite.
Okay, so the story is about when this herd of Miniwings gatecrash a fancy high tea garden party hosted by the Great Aunties of two sisters. What follows is sheer havoc.
The fun begins when a three-tiered plate of mini-cut, triangle-shaped sandwiches is accidentally bumped. Of course, all those scrumbly treats end up on the grass. How will the sisters explain this situation to the Great Aunties? Will Mum understand it wasn’t their fault? No...Mum is too busy scoffing the one remaining sandwich, which happens to contain her arch enemy ‘cucumber’. For her, this results in a hasty retreat to the loo.
As a distraction, Clara, one of the two sisters, explains her take on the size of our stomach and digestive tract based on what she’s recently learned in school. Then she tags on how many cups of saliva a body can make in a day. These and many other fascinating little gems are scattered throughout the book.
Meanwhile, the Miniwings are free-riding in the girls’ summer hats, which they had especially decorated with artificial fruit and feathers for this occasion. Since they were greeby-gutsie over the scattered sandwiches, they now all have hiccups.
When the Miniwings discover that the remaining garden party high tea cakes and desserts are inside in the kitchen, they descend on it. One Miniwing, Moonlight, flies right into the super-scrumbly chocolate cake; he’s stuck there. Oceana falls right into the bowl of whipped cream...
Needless to say the high tea is RUINED!
So how can our two girls make this catastrophe better?
You’ll have to read this delightful story to find out.
Now, if you’re confused about any of the secret code words used throughout the story, there’s a whole dictionary at the back to explain words like fanglers, noggin-flash, owpie, redonkerous and many, many others. Who knows? You might even add these words to your own secret codes.
And added bonus right here: there’s a whole series of Miniwing tales listed at the back of this book.

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: Miniwings - Moonlight the Unicorn’s High Tea Hiccup
Author: Sally Sutton; illustrations: Kirsten Richards
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 9781775434887
RRP: $14.99
Available: bookshops

Cleverly woven family tale

18/9/2019

Kindred
by Tony Chapelle

I am unfamiliar with Tony Chapelle’s previous work in the “Gilbard” series of which this is the fourth. The introduction states that, despite being the sequel, Kindred stands on its own and I very much agree. There is a completeness in this book, an expertly told exposition which offers all the back history required.
    This is not a gripping drama or a mystery novel but a cleverly woven family tale that connects four generations beginning with Adelaide Gilbard (whom I assume is the subject of previous works in the series) in the mid-eighteen hundreds with a linear thread to her great-great-granddaughter Gus Ashcott-Gilbard in 2017.
    All in all, this is a beautifully told love story which is cleverly revealed by alternating between the perspectives of Tela and Jamie and interspersed with readings from Adelaide’s journal. The main characters lead what appear to be very different lives in unquestionable acceptance of one other. The slice of life approach to the telling is refreshing and I found myself feeling like I was, at times, simply catching up with the news of some friendly neighbours.
    However, it is also a social commentary on what has changed, and more importantly, not changed since the colonisation of Aotearoa; a hint of what a life in New Zealand is like for those whose skin is not Pakeha white. Add to that a tale of loss, of moving on or of accepting one’s lot in life, it is all here. The characters are beautifully drawn and the back stories are subtly sprinkled through the chapters to create a very believable journey walking alongside the family.
    It took a chapter or two to get used to the construct but, once that was clear, I was engaged to the end. I would say also that the feelings of loyalty and devotion of the last seventy odd pages sit with me still.

Review by George Hollinsworth

Title: Kindred
Author: Tony Chapelle
Publisher: Rangitawa Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9951166-2-7
RRP: paperback: $35; ebook $3.40
Available: Bruce McKenzie Booksellers and other selected bookshops; through on-line booksellers including Amazon, and through Amazon for Kindle.

A strong story to tell

13/9/2019

Relative Strangers: A Mother’s Adoption Memoir
by Pip Murdoch

Relative strangers is a book written from the heart by a young woman in the sixties who found herself in the sad situation of being pregnant when society was very judgmental, and being pregnant and unmarried was a stigma. One that affected many before that time and up to more recently.
The author is brutally honest as she describes being a teenager and a student nurse, away from the confines of her family in a time when the sexual revolution was beginning to be felt in New Zealand.
It shows her honesty and bravery when she realizes marriage was not the answer and taking a flight to Australia for an abortion was also out of the question. The adoption process, the only way open to her at the time was explained. For her, it was the answer and it is along this path that the author documents her journey.
She tells how she left her employment and her home to live in semi exile until her child was born. She describes her confinement and the difficulty in parting with her son, knowing that, despite what her heart said, her head said different and that is the path she needed to take.
My heart ached for her. I was also a student nurse in the sixties and had friends who were faced with this dilemma. I recall horror stories that were circulating at the time of the different decisions that were being made.
I thank the GP who, getting a group of us students together said very sternly, “if you have a friend who is pregnant insist they have medical care.” This was after a very harrowing few days as he fought for the life of a teenager who approached full term with no medical care and whose life, consequently, was in real grave risk from very severe eclampsia. There was no doubt where his compassion was and a wedding ring did not come into it.
Pip Murdoch has written beautifully of finding her child as an adult and how she approached the reunion with trepidation. She tells honestly of the mistakes she made along the path, which makes the story so compelling to read. She ends with the hope that people will have a better understanding of why babies were given out for adoption at that time. It is what society demanded then and it took a strong person to stand up against the moral critics of the time.
All I can say is thank goodness society has changed and there are no longer any children in New Zealand who bear the stigma of illegitimacy due to the term being outlawed since.
This is a book with a strong story to tell, and it documents the thoughts of the sixties.
I thank the author for it.

Review by Merilyn Mary

Title: Relative Strangers: A Mother’s Adoption Memoir
Author: Pip Murdoch
Publisher: Fern Publishing
ISBN: 9780473481087
RRP: $29.90
Available: bookshops

Welcome history of New Zealand comedy

7/9/2019

Funny As. The Story of New Zealand Comedy
by Paul Horan & Philip Matthews

The recent TV series of the same name was a treat – we got to see so many fellow Kiwis who worked to bring local humour into our lives by means of live shows and media. How good it was to see again some classic clips remembered from the days of comedians such as John Clarke, Billy T James, Murray Ball and more.
     Now there’s the book, which is even more welcome because, though we don’t get the clips, it gives a wider coverage of the subject and it’s there to pick up and refer to when we wish.
     The 366 pages contain a wealth of information on those who have entertained us from the start of the 20th century to the present.
     The early decades, covering the 2 World Wars, overwhelmingly favoured male comedy writers, cartoonists and performers. In times of war, perhaps necessarily, male entertainers dressed as women. Following that, female impersonators and institutions such as the university capping show carried on the tradition.
     As welcome as this history is, the woman reader can’t help but wince repeatedly at the reminder of these overwhelmingly male-dominated times. Even after the 1970s when a few women infiltrate the ranks the trend continues and any list is monopolized by men. Women comedians and writers have had a hard job to convince male decision-makers, let alone audiences, that they too can be funny. And it’s surely a fair comment to say that the boys’ comedy club has not been quick to include them.
     It is, then,  good to see that the two male authors of this book have recognized this fact and acknowledged the contributions of some of our female producers of humour – including among others Rosemary McLeod and Diane Wichtel with their satire, Jean Betts and Alison Quigan with their stage plays, and so many wonderful actresses who have made us laugh along with their comedy characters.
     It’s hard to imagine now, but the arrival of television in the early 1960s didn’t prove an immediate source of work for local comedians; from the ‘seventies we were beginning to see home-made programmes, including the first Kiwi sitcom, Buck House. Remember that? Though many of our early shows now appear cringe-inducing, they provided a training ground for local writers and artists and laid the foundation for more to come.
Most of the book's 19 chapters are summaries of periods or specific media, or thematic explanations, and there are copious illustrations. A few chapters, though, are devoted to single performers – Billy T James, John Clarke, The Topp Twins, Flight of the Conchords, The Front Lawn, and Taika Waititi – arguably our most prominent and memorable to date.
Rather than singling out one image for the cover, it’s a wise marketing decision to give the buyer a choice of four different and colourful slipcovers – each of them a great improvement on the inappropriately dull black and white card cover it hides.

Review by J.M.

Title: Funny As. The Story of New Zealand Comedy
Authors: Paul Horan & Philip Matthews
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409005
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

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