The Water Bottle is the story of three children: Tom, Airini and Derya. They come from different backgrounds, but maybe their families are connected in ways they don’t yet know. This has been a lovely book to work on. There are a number of Anzac Day-themed picture books, but I think this one is unique for its pairing of a NZ writer and Turkish illustrator. I loved working with Oratia and seeing how the project developed, from our initial discussion to the finished book.   Picture book writers and illustrators often work quite separately, but because Burak Akbay was in Turkey, we se ..read more

Today polio is an almost forgotten disease, but a hundred years ago, polio epidemics regularly swept the world. This is the story of the 1936/37 polio epidemic in New Zealand. Quarantine was first published by Scholastic as Enemy at the Gate, but it's now been republished and brought under the My New Zealand Story banner. I love the fabulous new cover, and I'm so pleased that this book will now reach a new generation of readers for whom epidemics are now part of their lives, not just a story from history.  Thanks to Bobs Books Blog for this thoughtful review.  ..read more

Sharing the stories behind my books Enemy at the Gate and The Great Chocolate Cake Bake Off here with @CreativeReadsNZ.  As their website says, creative rights are Good for our economy, Good for our culture, Good for our social wellbeing and Good for all of us. #KeepthePagesTurning #CreativeRightsNZ @CreativeReadsNZ ..read more

 Seven years after marking Anzac Day at Gallipoli with the wonderful group of Gallipoli Volunteers (and some thousands of others), it felt very special today to be at another Anzac Day service beside the sea, as the local community gathered on a still and sunny morning at Paekākāriki. Poppy tree in the village Another special thing about this service was that nearly everyone who spoke or carried out an official function was a woman: MC Janet Holborow, the woman who called the karanga, the representative from the Turkish Embassy, the minister who gave the Prayer of Remembrance a ..read more

 This year the Wellington Writers Walk committee decided to hold a walking tour as part of Wellington Heritage Week. Actually two tours - one on Thursday afternoon and one on Saturday morning.  Thanks to Stefanie McKenna for these wonderful photos of the Thursday walk. (The Saturday one was equally fun, but with worse weather!) We covered about 7 or 8 of the 23 plaques, between Te Papa and Frank Kitts park, starting with Iris Wilkinson/Robin Hyde and ending with Denis Glover. (Except on Saturday, when the rain finally defeated us before we reached Denis' plaque.)   Thanks a ..read more

Last week I was in the South Island doing a series of school visits, thanks to Read NZ Te Pou Muramura and the Writers in Schools programme.  At Kaikorai Valley College in Dunedin, I did a couple of writing workshops and we talked about using our imaginations to try and look at things in a different way.  Here are four of the wonderful poems that the students wrote as a result - I love the amazing ideas they have come up with.    The Ocean The ocean is a soft Blue sheet, changing in the wind and devouring land. It is a complete different world, creating a home for fish, san ..read more

Wife after Wife is the dazzling debut of Olivia Hayfield, and simultaneously the first adult novel by Auckland writer Sue Copsey, who launched her pen-name alter ego after winning a Pitch Perfect competition run by the New Zealand Society of Authors at their AGM in 2018. The prize was consideration of a manuscript by High Spot Literary’s Vicki Marsdon and Nadine Rubin Nathan.  I remember being there when the winner was announced, the congratulations that flowed from everyone in the room to Sue, and her utter astonishment. Over the next few months, this news was followed by even more excit ..read more

The Wakefields haven’t gone down well in history, more notorious for scandals like Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s abduction of a 15-year-old heiress than celebrated for any of their achievements. Despite the evidence of Point Jerningham, I hadn’t even heard of Edward Jerningham Wakefield (apparently the Wakefield males of Edward’s line all shared the same first name) so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. Drawn in by the striking cover by Rakai Karaitiana, what I found was a colourful and detailed picture of 1840s Wellington. When we read and think about the 1840s, our attention is often ..read more

This is the other children's novel (along with The Great Chocolate Cake Bake Off) that I've recently re-released under the Pipi Press imprint.  A deadly disease is sweeping the world and nobody knows how to stop it. Twelve-year-old Tom Mitchell can't even see his best friend Charlie. He wonders when the lockdown is ever going to end. And then things get worse. It might all sound familiar, but this is New Zealand in 1937-38. The disease is infantile paralysis, or polio, and nobody knows where it will strike next.  When Enemy at the Gate was first published, something st ..read more

 I've just re-released two of my children's novels, and this is one of them.  The Great Chocolate Cake Bake Off was first published some years ago and has been out of print for a while, but it's a book that people often tell me they loved reading. I've even had people contact me to say they loved it so much as a child, they want to know where to buy a copy now. (And now they can!) Some of my favourite emails include: "I absolutely loved your book; The Great Chocolate Cake Bake-Off. It was the best story I’ve ever read" (from a 9-year-old boy) and "Chocolate Cake is still the be ..read more