It was an exciting day at the Storylines Margaret Mahy Awards last weekend. Sapling editor Hannah Marshall was not only the winner for the Unpublished Writer Award in the young adult manuscript category, but captured her reflections of the day—both…
Continuing with our coverage for Mental Health Awareness Week, Sapling editor Hannah has some hard truths to share about the representation of mental illness in YA literature—and the harm that is caused when these representations are done poorly. Content warning:…
Matariki falls on July 14 this year—the second year Aotearoa has celebrated the Māori New Year as a public holiday. We’ve compiled a quick list of some recent Matariki reads published during The Sapling’s hiatus. Nani Jo Me Ngā…
Editor Hannah Marshall heads back in time in Tessa Duder’s newest YA novel, The Sparrow. Hannah puts some serious questions to Tessa, getting great insights into researching and writing historical fiction. Hannah Marshall: You’re a veteran of New Zealand literature….
Each year, the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults make for a massive occasion in the Aotearoa kids’ book world—move over Oscars, out of the way Silver Scrolls. This is our night. It’s my first year covering the NZCYA…
Sapling editor Hannah Marshall tapped into her inner journalist to attend the Featherston Booktown festival earlier this month. Her findings are reported here (spoiler: she loved every minute of it). On any ordinary day, the small southern Wairarapa town of…
Hannah Marshall offers us her opinions on four recent junior fiction releases—featuring talking cats, taniwha, secret agents and more. Pipi and Pou and the Raging Mountain and Pipi and Pou and the River Monster, written by Tim Tipene and illustrated…
In the wake of various opinions about the state of children’s literature, Hannah Marshall tells us why we should be centring the voices of young people and moving on from the tired rhetoric of PC madness and literary elitism. Two…
A fleeting comment on Radio NZ about books set in Aotearoa made student and book reviewer Hannah Marshall uneasy. She sets out on a quest to figure out why it is that we don’t want to set our books here,…