The Sapling co-editor Nida Fiazi reviews the first picture book retelling of her favourite childhood folktale Buz-e-Chini. She recalls the nightmare that revived Afghan oral storytelling traditions within her family, and shares how this helped improve her oral literacy as a bilingual child. Nida's mum and her younger brother reading The Legend of Buz-e-Chini by Kids Own Publishing. The Hazaragi folktale Buz-e-Chini is the story of my childhood. Set in rural Afghanistan, the t

Catherine Robertson reflects on her early years from a literary angle, focusing on the intrinsic connection between her memories of books and memories of her mother. Catherine’s latest novel What You Wish For is out now from Black Swan. Catherine (age 3-ish) and her brother on Raumati Beach. My memories of childhood reading cannot be separated from memories of my mother. She was the conduit through which books arrived. Every three weeks, she would visit the library and place

'From where I sleep I can see the book on my bookshelf. I have read it so many times it has fallen apart, and now exists as an inelegant bundle of browning pages and brittle Sellotape.' All her life, actor and writer Michelle Langstone has felt the influence of the 1959 novel My Side of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George, and here she explains why. Michelle and her copy of the book By the time I was 10 years old, I had run away three times. All three times I attempted to r

Author Swapna Haddow has recently moved to Christchurch from her home in the UK. Her Dave Pigeon books are absolutely hilarious, so we asked her to tell us a bit about the funny books of her childhood. From Sweet Valley, to Roald Dahl, to Sue Townsend's incredible Adrian Mole books, it is a trip down memory lane. Swapna Haddow I started this piece thinking I was going to get on my soapbox and shout about how funny books aren’t taken seriously, how they fail to get recognition

'I’m a kindred spirit to Anne of Green Gables’ Anne Shirley. When I feel like crying, you see it in my cheeks, in the flicker in my eyes, and sometimes you see it in my bottom lip.' Kura Rutherford writes about children's literature’s reflection of our ideas about crying, and suggests it could be a place of both social change and solace. Do you remember the first time a character cried in a book you were reading? Mine is a story my mum used to read us, Greyling by Jane Yolen.

What fictional death have you never got over? That's the question asked of our editor Jane Arthur by poet Chris Tse, guest curator of the 'In Memoriam' event at last weekend's LitCrawl in Wellington, a literary festival with a difference. Jane chose Charlotte from E.B. White's enduring classic, Charlotte's Web, and wrote this poem for her. O arachnid O literate departed Carlotta, Lottie, Charlie Charlotte A. Cavatica O Charlotte and your wordy web O you, barn spider, who were

Claire Murdoch is the recently appointed Publishing Manager of Penguin Random House New Zealand. We asked her to share some formative books from her childhood, and she handed us a stunning essay on reading, friendship, imagination, and growing up in Aotearoa (mostly). I didn’t think this was going to be about my best friend, Sarah, and our life in books (i.e. our life in general). It was meant to be about Dad reading us Tintins before bed, doing all the voices, in his blister

'Throughout my life I have turned to the page as a soft place to fall and a wise place to rise.' For Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2018, poet and children's book author Courtney Sina Meredith shares her personal discovery of how powerful words can be in expressing your identity, no matter your age. I have a clear memory of writing a poem at primary school about a group of magical princesses. They each had their own unicorn (of course) and in the final stanza, becau

Multi-accoladed poet and founder of the creative writing programme at Victoria University of Wellington, Bill Manhire relives the magic of Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree, in this essay adapted from a talk given at the 2017 Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival. Before I could read, the stories that mattered most were tales from the Brothers Grimm as told to me by my mother, and the Oscar Wilde fable, The Happy Prince, as read by Orson Welles on the record that adults played on a b

Kura Rutherford ruminates on how powerfully children's books can evoke geographies both unknown and familiar, from Beatrix Potter’s Lake District to the isolation of Mangere Island. Sometimes a walk around a lake means walking into a book. When my family and I visited the Lake District we were in a hurry. We didn’t think we had time to visit Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top Farm, but on a whim we decided to pop in. When we got there though, we panicked at the sight of a carpark over

Kate Duignan recalls two influential books from her childhood, Heidi and The Diddakoi, in this stunning personal essay about the importance of a child's sense of home. Kate's new novel for adults, The New Ships, is out now from Victoria University Press. Novelist Anna Smaill has called it 'a gripping novel about lost children and a very fine portrait of family life in all its beauty and betrayal. Intricate, compelling, and deeply moving.' Kate Duignan as a child I think of my

Emma Neale is a Dunedin-based poet, novelist, and recently appointed editor of the esteemed New Zealand literary journal, Landfall, which has been running for over 70 years. She tells us, hilariously and poignantly, about the books her two sons are reading and answers an important question: 'How would you fry a car?'. What does 'story time' look like at your house? Story time happens wherever you can fit a boy, a parent and a book. Although our youngest reads to himself often

Whāngārei specialist children's librarian Meredith Wightman gives us a peek into her notebook today, and gives us a list of picture books that can help children ponder and process death, dying and grief. Last week I was flicking through my work notebook to see what on earth I have been doing in the last year (it’s performance review time) and right at the back was a little list of books from our children’s collection that are about death. Thankfully, it’s not a list that I ha

For World Refugee Day, former refugee Nida Fiazi writes about her life and how books have intersected with it, and includes her recommendations for books (and attitudes) to help all people in Aotearoa understand the lives of refugees better. Books and reading were never part of my life prior to arriving to New Zealand. My mother had never attended school so unfortunately, at the time, she wasn’t literate either. However, this is not to say I was deprived of the wonderful gift

Bonnie Etherington, author of the multi-award-nominated novel The Earth Cries Out, reminisces about the stories and books from her childhood, how they connected her to New Zealand from West Papua, and considers language's ability to give voice and pass on stories. Bonnie Etherington (centre) with her siblings My dad told us brain stories. We called them brain stories because they came from his brain and not from the pages of a book. The brain story I remember most clearly is