Cassie Hart reviews two new middle grade novels both entrenched in a sense of place and dealing with difficult emotions. Rachael King’s The Grimmelings is beautiful and fantastical, and Leonie Agnew’s Take Me To Your Leader is funny and heartwarming….
Leila Austin reviews two new novels and comes across adventurous kids, dragon poo and mysteriously vanishing pistachio cupcakes. Maddison McQueen and the Cupcake Mystery (Red Collie Mysteries: Book 1), by Kate Gordon-Smith (Relish Books) Maddison McQueen and the Cupcake Mystery…
James Russell The Sapling is running a Summer Excerpt Series showcasing the junior and young adult titles from the 2023 Storylines Notable Book Awards. This week we have the first three chapters from James Russell’s Children of the Rush 2, the thrilling sequel to…
By Anne Kayes The Sapling is running a Summer Excerpt Series showcasing the junior and young adult titles from the 2023 Storylines Notable Book Awards. Next up is the third title in Anne Kaye’s Tūī Street series, Tūī Street Legends. You can read…
SF Said’s visionary tale Tyger finally makes its way to Aotearoa bookshops this month. Already published to lavish acclaim in the United Kingdom, the book takes the mythic work of the great William Blake as inspiration for a middle grade…
Two international novels with links to New Zealand: one rooted in Aboriginal culture, the other with Russian folklore, both filled with adventure. Fiona Giles reviews these middle-grade reads. A Wolf for a Spell, written by Karah Sutton and illustrated by…
This year, children’s book illustrator and author Ruth Paul was awarded the University of Otago College of Education Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence Fellowship—a mouthful of a title for a genre of few words. Ruth tells us about…
It’s the penultimate instalment in our coverage of each category in the NZCYA Awards, and today we’re focusing on the finalists in the Best First Book Award category! Hear from the authors below as they tell us about their writing…
Young author Denika Mead sits down with two fellow young writers, Arlo Kelly and Arush Gupta, to hear all about their books, their inspiration, and their creative processes. Arush Arush Gupta is the author of James Wood: Chronicles of a…
Bee Trudgeon reviews some mysterious new junior fiction and middle-grade titles that have something for everyone: from the new chapter-book reader who likes plenty of pictures to help break up and decode the text, to the progressing reader who likes…