In response to a request The Sapling put out on Twitter, teacher and author Sarina Dickson has compiled this wonderful list of New Zealand titles for those young readers who have finished Harry Potter and are reading above their age level at primary school. Advanced readers, assemble! As a child I loved to read. By the age of eight, I was reading anything I could get my hands on and in desperation had moved onto the books my mother had read. I read all about what Katy did at

Do you want to be sure you're getting top-shelf books for your favourite people this Christmas – or on any gift-giving occasion? We are making it easy for you! Here is our selection of the very best New Zealand junior fiction books of 2018. The Mapmaker’s Race, by Eirlys Hunter and Kirsten Slade Eirlys Hunter and Kirsten Slade invite their readers to come on an adventure with the Santander family, across the hills and mountains of a land where the dots of towns have not yet b

Split consciousness features in very different ways in these two wonderful junior fiction titles for opposite ends of the audience age group. Sarah Forster tells us what she thinks. Between, by Adele Broadbent (OneTree House) Between had me under its spell from the very start. Written in the first person, it investigates the tensions within the life of a 10-year-old boy who is just beginning to find independence, while looking closer at his own family and wondering about the

We're pleased to present an excerpt from The Mapmakers' Race (Gecko Press), a new novel by Eirlys Hunter and illustrated by Kirsten Slade. Kate De Goldi says the book is 'one of the most poised, stylish children’s books [she has] read in a long time … An utter delight'. In The Mapmakers' Race, four children temporarily lose their parents just as they are about to begin the race that offers their last chance of escaping poverty. Their task is to map a rail route through an unc

Kirsten Slade is the illustrator of the new kids' novel by Eirlys Hunter, The Mapmakers' Race (Gecko Press). Here she tells us – in words and pictures – about her daily creative routine, which includes something resembling a scene from A Summery Saturday Morning ... I try to wake up a whole hour before I actually need to. I’m not a morning person, and require a gentle re-entry to the world, with at least one cup of coffee in bed accompanied by a little quiet reading time. Onc