Literacy Forum NZ

TE KORERO PANUI TUHITUHI O AOTEAROA Vol.34, No. 1, 2019

is published by

The New Zealand Literacy Association (Inc.) which is an affiliate of the International Reading Association Literacy Forum NZ is a peer reviewed journal, the official publication of the New Zealand Literacy Association, which is an affiliate of the International Reading Association. It is published three times per year and is free to NZLA members. Subscription cost for non-members is available on application.

Ideas and statements expressed in Literacy Forum NZ are not necessarily the official viewpoint of the New Zealand Literacy Association.

Editorial Board

Glenice Andrews Sue Bridges Trish Brooking Wendy Carss Sue Dymock Joy Hawke Libby Limbrick Wendy Morgan Mal Thompson

Editor: Mal Thompson

Local Editorial team: Manawatu Literacy Association, led by Sarah McCord and Mal Thompson. The panel of reviewers are members of the NZLA, plus academics and teachers from New Zealand and overseas.

Address for correspondence

Dr Mal Thompson (General Editor) 178 Burt Street Wakari Dunedin 9010 [email protected]

NZLA website: http://www.nzla.org.nz/

Published March 2019 © Copyright NZLA ISSN 2324-3643 CONTENTS

From the President...... 4 Advocating for children: Not all literacy interventions, approaches and resources are equal Janet S. Gaffney, Suzanne Smith, Frances Commack, Annabelle Ash, Margot Mackie, Sonia Mudgway...... 5 Va‘atele: Enabling Pasifika literacy success Rae Si‘ilata...... 13 Kiwis, Geckos, School Journal, Annuals, Susan Paris, and me, Kate Kate de Goldi...... 25 What to watch out for in children’s publishing in 2019 Rob Southam ...... 38 Narrative and nourisment: story and self Barbara Else ...... 42 Ramping up reading for pleasure Debbie Roxburgh...... 55 Literacy Landscapes - National 41st Conference Report Sarah McCord ...... 60 NZLA 42nd Conference "The Arts as a Bridge to Literacy"...... 64 Book Reviews Oi Frog Kes Gray, illustrated by Jim Field...... 67 The Old Man Sarah V, illustrated by Claude K Dubois...... 67 News from the Councils Southland...... 68 Waikato...... 69 What were we reading in 2009?...... 71

Cover photograph; Story time with "Poppa". NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION From the President Kia ora colleagues

Welcome to the first issue of Literacy Forum NZ 2019. I hope you all have had a relaxing Summer break and now you will already be full on into term 1. We are pleased to bring you another issue of great professional reading that includes a range of quality articles from our 2018 conference, “Literacy Landscapes” in Palmerston North. This year the Canterbury Literacy Association will be delighted to host “The Arts as a Bridge to Literacy”, NZLA’s 42nd National Conference which will be held in Christchurch at Rangi Ruru Girls’ School in Merivale. Registration details about the conference are up on the website and look out for the ‘Call for Workshop Submissions’ coming soon. The NZLA Executive is very grateful that the extremely generous Marie Clay Literacy Trust has given us $15,000 for the 2019 Conference Awards. $12,000 of this is for Early Career teachers (up to and including six years teaching experience) and $3000 is for Experienced teachers. Every Council will be awarding 1 x $1000 MCLT Conference Award for Early Career teachers and NZLA will be awarding 6 x $500 MCLT Conference Awards for Experienced Teachers across New Zealand to attend the NZLA 42nd National Conference in Palmerston North. To apply for either of these awards please contact your local Literacy Council for more information. Contact details for Literacy Councils are on the back cover of this Literacy Forum NZ or on the NZLA website. The next Regional Leadership Workshop will be held in Christchurch on Saturday 30 March 2019 for Councils in the central North Island. Leadership workshops held in previous years have been very well received with participants gaining a lot from the sharing and discussions. I will be in touch with the local councils in these areas very soon with more details. This is the time of the year when most Literacy Associations are holding their Annual General Meetings. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank those members who put up their hand and help on their local Association’s committee. Your work is very much appreciated. If you are not a member of a local Literacy Association committee, maybe this is the time you could consider joining. The old saying “Many hands make light work” very much applies to our committees - the more active committee members you have the less work it should be for everyone. Belonging to a well-run committee can be very rewarding and many life time friends have been made from being on committees with your colleagues. Please consider joining your local Literacy Association if you are not currently a committee member.

All the best for a wonderful 2019

Joy Hawke, NZLA President 4 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019 Advocating for children: Not all literacy interventions, approaches and resources are equal Janet S. Gaffney, Suzanne Smith, Frances Commack, Annabelle Ash, Margot Mackie, Sonia Mudgway

Advocacy is not separate from teaching The advocacy role of teachers will children, it is what allow us to teach our be discussed along with criteria for children. critically appraising teaching approaches (Amy Smith, 2013, Teacher Leader, and resources that facilitate literacy Madison Country Schools, Kentucky) processing. Empirical research, school and classroom contexts, children’s At the 2018 New Zealand Literacy competences, and teachers’ theories of Association’s (NZLA) National learning guide selection of interventions, Conference in Palmerston North, approaches and teaching resources. the first author (first name) gave a Which resources are worth the effort? plenary presentation titled the same Which ones are worthy of children’s as this manuscript. When invited to time? Why does it matter? In complex submit a manuscript to the Literacy systems, a change in one part of the Forum, NZLA’s journal based on this system has ripple effects at every other presentation, I invited a few educators, level of operation that expands or limits who attended the keynote, to engage optimal learning of each child. Students’ as dynamic thought partners and co- learning is what is at stake. authors. We (F, S, A and M; first names) Educators are quite clear that they offer our reciprocal musings on teachers’ are advocates for the children they teach, roles as advocates for children to prompt the ones in their respective classrooms and extend your thinking, whether or not or in their charge as Reading Recovery, you were able to attend the conference. Resource Teachers of Literacy, Resource Teachers are advocates for children Teachers of Learning and Behaviour, in teaching and selection of literacy or Special Needs. Advocacy casts a interventions, approaches and resources. wider net when teachers join with Teachers serve an essential role as principals, assistant principals, Boards members of an informed school team of Trustees and community members to with responsibility for decision making make resource decisions for the school, about literacy learning within their local Kāhui Ako or school cluster. Literacy context. In the workplace of schools, teams are responsible for selecting colleagues engage with others within and evaluating literacy interventions, a set of shared assumptions that create approaches, curriculum materials and the culture of learning and teaching. commercial resources that are used 5 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

across classrooms. These school-wide collective decision-making about decisions are often accompanied by literacy practices that impact the corresponding professional learning sector, school and cluster levels. development (PLD). Resource MM: Being advocates for children is a decisions, therefore, have pedagogical, privilege. It is our role to critically curricular and economic impact on every appraise teaching approaches, student, their whānāu and educators in a programmes and resources that we school or school cluster. use. I ask myself, “Do I?” Teachers are essential contributors Before continuing to read, engage in this to these school teams. Teachers, who targeted reflection: Think of a resource, are leading the way, are often in non- programme, curriculum or approach that positional roles without leadership titles. you have recently chosen to use with a They are the teachers who their peers class, small group, or an individual child seek out for guidance, collaboration and respond to the following questions. and innovation (Gaffney, Price, Abd- • How did you hear about it? El-Khalick, Frericks, & Sundeman, • Why did you choose it? submitted). The challenge for teachers, • Did it work? who are leaders, is that they derive • How did you decide if it worked? their expertise from their classroom The most important question is “why”. experience, “yet unless they venture Why did you choose it? Then, consider out of it, connecting and relating to if your measuring stick for “working” other adults in the school, they do not corresponds to the reason you chose it. fulfill the power in their teaching role” (Ackerman & Mackenzie, 2006, p. 66). FC: Teachers have to constantly keep An expansive view of teaching advocacy asking, “Why”? Why do they work? beyond the realm of a classroom creates Why don’t they work? Is it the right space for teachers to understand and intervention for the child? This links influence systemic change. “Change well with The Golden Circle (Sinek, 2009). Often in schools, we do what must be conceived at the level of a has traditionally always been done, system, but change can only be achieved what is easy or what is most time at the level of an individual” (Gaffney & effective. Sometimes we don’t always Paynter, 1994, p. 24). see the results that we want to FC: Advocacy for children . . .what is achieve or that have been achieved your definition? previously. It really made me think deeper about some interventions that JG: To act in support of another’s I have previously used and I wonder interests if the achievement could have been SS: Teaching is advocacy on a daily different if I had thought deeper about basis. the approach. JG: And, extends to children beyond JG: Sinek’s “Golden Circle” is a set of individual classrooms through three concentric circles with “Why” 6 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

in the centre, “How” in the middle are protective devices to avoid being circle and “What” in the outer seduced by fads, unwarranted claims, circle. Thinking and talking about flash trends, packaged programmes, teaching in professional discussions gimmicks and testimonials. Assuring is often focussed on ‘what’ to do and quality of resources protects children ‘how’ to do it rather than addressing and youth from ineffective teaching, the central question: “Why?” teachers from unproductive PLD and schools against the waste of funds. SS: We must rigorously inquire into On the websites and brochures of and evaluate interventions, commercial resources and the back approaches and resources to meet covers of professional books, descriptors, the complex and diverse needs of such as evidence-based and research- all our learners. We are accountable based, are highlighted. As advocates, for the resources we choose and must who act in the service of children and not be caught up in the ‘how’ and youth, and their families, members of the ‘what’ or oversimplify alternatives. literacy team would have responsibility “Why” must remain central to our for confirming these claims. Duke and decision making. Martin (2011) offered a clear distinction SM: Am I asking my team the right between research- and evidence-based. questions to challenge their When claims are made that an approach, thinking? I continue to encourage intervention or material has a research my team to question and challenge base, this means that the authors have my decisions (and not be afraid to identified one or more sources in the assert their opinion when they are literature, which may or may not be passionate about the progress of a empirical, to back up aspects of their child). resource. Thus, a professional resource A thoughtful, critical and collective may cite a handful of related references approach is needed to appraise resources, that address the importance of a particularly commercial ones, that are curriculum area, such as comprehension used in teaching. Quality assurance or writing but are not providing support procedures can be undertaken in the for specific recommended practices or selection of resources before they are tools in the book or kit. “Evidence-based” purchased or adopted full scale in or “research-tested” requires a higher Year-level classes or across a school standard of use than “research-based”. or schools. The literacy team fact- Evidentiary claims require empirical checks advertisements, research claims, studies of specific recommended alignment with the stated purpose(s) practices or resources using systematic and with the New Zealand Curriculum procedures in similar contexts. (Ministry of Education, MoE, 2007) Imagine a scenario on a teacher and Effective Literacy Practice (MoE, website in which a teacher asks teachers 2003a and b) and the contextual fit with to recommend resources they use for the school. These assurance procedures writing. A respondent might say, “I use 7 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

“x”. The requesting teacher says, “Do learning, the former requires individuals you like it?’ The respondent gives an to proceed through the same sequence acclamation, “We are very happy with it.” that is building a foundation on sand Another teacher adds. “We use it, too!” (deficits) rather than a solid footing The initial teacher says, “What school are (competences). “Good teaching . . . arises you in? Can we bring a team to visit?” out of the understanding teachers have of Within a few hours, 16 educators have their craft and never out of prescriptive joined the conversation and expressed programs” (Clay. 1998, p. 130). excitement about the resource, desire to As advocates, a community of visit the school or intent to purchase. As colleagues could agree to pay attention an advocate for children, some different to their own unintended assumptions responses might be ”Why did you conveyed in language about children. choose this resource for your context?”, When a label, for example ESOL, is “What competencies of the children used as a descriptor of a child, is the did you want to expand?” “What can conversation focussed on building on the children do now that convinced you that child’s linguistic competences in their it ‘works’?” “Do some children benefit heritage language/s and other related more than others? How do you explain funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, the differential benefits? “Will you & González, 1992; Podmore, Hedges, share the studies that you read in your Keegan & Harvey, 2016; Rios-Aguilar, decision-making?” Kiyama, Gravitt, & Moll, 2011) and on While we would like to think that their current competencies in English? literacy resources are being thoughtfully “The concept of funds of knowledge . . . selected as fit-for-purpose and the is based on a simple premise: People are learning context with evidentiary competent, they have knowledge, and support, the influx of packaged their life experiences have given them programmes and downloadable that knowledge” (Gonzalez, Moll, & resources that are narrowly targeted for Amanti, 2005, ix-x [italics in original]). groups (e.g., bi- and multi-lingual and One way to readjust teaching from cultural, ethnic, dyslexic, oral language) a focus on needs, or deficits, is to take belies this assumption. Programmes are seriously the challenge of identifying and designed to teach members of groups focusing only on children’s competences. as if they are the same and will follow This suggestion comes with a caution a predetermined sequence of learning. that this shift in mindset and teaching is Assumptions about groups, in learning not easy, and will take time, commitment, as in life, are misleading in terms of determination and creativity. Engaging individuals (Gaffney, 2016). Programmes in advanced professional learning is are designed to meet needs, or deficits, of best undertaken with colleagues who group members rather than extending will share their collective wisdom and each individual’s array of competences. accountability. The latter leverages children’s learning The Window for Examining Learning- momentum and leads to sustainable Teaching Interactions was designed by 8 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

the first author in 2005 to graphically child we teach” and “our job is to depict the complexity of the relationships figure out the sense the child is trying between a child and teacher’s behaviours to make of the world”. As I start a and cognitions (Clay, 1991, p. 233). new year, this is something that I keep in front of my mind. I need to AA: The window of learning-teaching establish relationships with all my interactions stood out for me. In children and their families, spend Reading Recovery and classroom time learning about them, how they teaching, we notice a child’s actions learn and how they view themselves and behaviours, then the teacher as learners and how they see the responds depending on the needs of world around them. This will give the child. Considering what the me a much better understanding child does and thinks has helped me of what is going to work for them to wait before I respond. and why it will work. I will be able JG: As we closely observe what a child to cater for my children in a much does or says, the challenge is to notice deeper level. and leverage the child’s responses JG: Teachers could build rapport with that represent new and emerging children without going to that competencies without being deeper level of understanding distracted by difficulties. the relationship of learning and SS: When you touched on learning- teaching. Theories of learning and teaching interactions, I was teaching offer explanations for particularly interested in a child’s groups of children. A colleague and reality vs. our perception of what I have proposed that a personal they think. What can we do and theory of each child is required—a look for to best understand their Theory of Callum, Marcus, Cecelia, thinking? or Tiantian—particularly when a child’s progress stalls (Gaffney JG: We can only make inferences about a & Jesson, in press). The Window child’s thinking from what they say offers a frame to analyse learning- and do; a reminder to be tentative teaching interactions to explain in our interpretations of another’s THIS child’s learning, drawing behaviour. Our interpretations map on the child’s language, cultural more closely on a child’s thinking and specialized content expertise, when we listen and observe closely knowledge and ways of knowing. over time and identify patterns of Teaching is an artisan craft (Gaffney, responses. 2015). As with other artisan crafts, such FC: As a teacher, I pride myself on the as boat builders, pounamou carvers, and relationships with my children and glass blowers, developing high quality their families. You mentioned that in the complex craft of teaching is “we need to have a theory of each multifaceted. How do we use experience, 9 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

intuition, and learning sciences to refine Our challenge is to “transcend the our teaching craft? boundaries among teachers, leaders and Reform must be built upon a political authorities in a way that allows theory of pedagogy that teachers us to nurture, challenge, encourage, and can take to depth. In this way, the develop every student entrusted to our theory can provide teachers with an care” (Reeves, 2008, p. 1). ongoing means of addressing new demands on their practice, rather than simply providing them with a set of practices they are expected to replicate regardless of context. (Bishop, O’Sullivan, & Berryman, 2010, p. 60) SS: The depth of our pedagogical theory then gives us the power, as artisans, to address the constant demands of practice. No matter where we are in our pedagogical understanding it is the grounding of ‘why’ that References reminds us to maintain a standard Ackerman, R., & Mackenzie, S. (2006). of curiosity and rigour. This Uncovering teacher leadership. Educational includes regularly clarifying our Leadership, 66-70. ‘why’ and seeking increasing depth Bishop, R., O’Sullivan, D.& Berryman, in our pedagogical theory as well as M. (2010). Scaling up education reform: being leaderful in our dialogue with Addressing the politics of disparity. Wellington, New Zealand: NZCER Press. others so that we all keep moving Clay, M. M. (1991). Becoming literate: The forward. construction of inner control. Auckland: SM: If we engage in collective leadership, Heinemann. we can centre every decision we Clay, M. M. (1998). By different paths to make back to children. common outcomes. York, ME: Stenhouse. Duke, N. K., & Martin, N. M. (2011). 10 JG: One colleague identified a shift in things every literacy educator should know the teacher-education landscape about research. The Reading Teacher, 65(1), from teachers as advocates to teachers 9-22. as moral agents (Kubanyiova, Gaffney, J. S. (2015, May). The tradition of 2018). te tukutuku: The unique literacy heritage of Aotearoa New Zealand. Invited presentation SM: We have to stand tall for our at National Reading Recovery Tutor children.And, grow our capacity of Development Week, Auckland, New “knowing what to do” (Chappell, Zealand. 2014; as cited in Kubanyiova, Gaffney, J. S. (2016). Proposal to establish The 2018). Marie Clay Research Centre. Faculty of 10 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

Education and Social Work, University of Zealand Curriculum. Wellington, New Auckland. Zealand: Learning Media. Gaffney, J. S., & Jesson, R. (in press). We Podmore, V., Hedges, H., Keegan, P. J., & have to know what they know (and so do Harvey, N. (2016). Teaching voyaging in they) for children to sustain learning and plurilingual seas: Young children learning independence. M. McVee, E. Ortlieb, J. through more than one language. Wellington, Reichenberg, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.). The New Zealand: NZCER. Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) Reeves, D. B. (2008). Reframing teacher in Literacy Research and Practice. Bingley, leadership to improve your school. Alexandria United Kingdom: Emerald Press. VA: Association for Supervision & Gaffney, J. S., & Paynter, S. Y. (1994). The Curriculum Development. role of early literacy interventions in the Rios-Aguilar, C., Kiyama, J. M., Gravitt, M., transformation of educational systems. & Moll, L.C. (2011). Funds of knowledge Literacy, Teaching and Learning, 1(1), 23- for the poor and forms of capital for the 29. rich? A capital approach to examining Gaffney, J. S., Price, R. L., Abd-El-Khalick, funds of knowledge. Theory and Research F., Frericks, C. B., & Sunderman, J. A. in Education, 9(2), 163-184. DOI: (submitted). Entrepreneurial teacher 10.1177/1477878511409776 leadership: A framework for catalyzing Sinek, S. (2009, September). How great innovation student, class, and school leaders inspire action. TEDx. Puget Sound, impact. Manuscript submitted for Washington.https://www.ted.com/talks/ publication, Faculty of Education and simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_ Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand. action Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. Smith, A. (2013, October 18). Outreach and (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: advocacy: What allows us to teach our Theorizing practices in households, children. RRCNA Connections: Resources for communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Decision Makers. Worthington: OH. Lawrence Erlbaum. Kubanyiova, M. (2018, March). Language Authors teachers in the age of ambiguity: Educating responsive meaning makers in the world. Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland. Moll L.C., Amanti C., Neff, D., and González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31, 132–41. Janet S. Gaffney is Professor of Ministry of Education. (2003a). Effective Educational Psychology-Literacy and Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4. Wellington, Director of the Marie Clay Research New Zealand: Learning Media. Ministry of Education. (2003b). Effective Centre in the Faculty of Education Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8. Wellington, and Social Work at the University of New Zealand: Learning Media. Auckland. She has a dual background Ministry of Education. (2007). The New in educational psychology and special 11 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

education with extensive teaching She has been teaching for 14 years and is experience in communities with currently a Reading Recovery teacher. She indigenous populations. has a special interest in Early Literacy for [email protected] children through Play-based Learning. [email protected]

Sonia Mudgway has been teaching in the Manawatu area over 24 years and is Margot Mackie is currently Deputy currently Principal of Tokomaru School, Principal of Manchester Street School a rural full-primary outside Palmerston in Feilding. Her current focus is on play- North. based learning in a school based context [email protected] and implementing the essence of the inspiring Reggio Emilia approach. [email protected]

Frances Cammock has a Bachelor of Education-Primary (2005). She currently teaches at Ruahine School in the outskirts Suzanne Sith is a Reading Recovery of Dannevirke. Frances’ strength lies in teacher, Philosophy 4 Children (P4C) junior mathematics. lead teacher, and Gifted Education [email protected] specialist at Russell Street School in Palmerston North. Last year she trained as a Reading Recovery teacher to dig deeper into early literacy processing. Email: [email protected]

Annabelle Ash is a primary school teacher at Aranui School in Wanganui. 12 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019 Va‘atele: Enabling Pasifika literacy success Rae Si‘ilata

Ki te taha o toku matua, no Ngati else…. Storied landscapes form Raukawa, no Tūhourangi, no Otaki spatial and temporal tracks left by ahau. Ki te taha o toku whaea, no Fiti, our ancestors that can be read with as no Savusavu ahau. Ki te taha o toku much care as one reads the narratives tane me aku tamariki, kei te hono ahau of classical history (p. 28). ki Hamoa. It is appropriate to consider the question about worldview and prior knowledge On my father’s side I come from Ngati in light of long term calls by tangata Raukawa, Tūhourangi and Otaki. On whenua (people of the land) to teach local my mother’s side from Savusavu, Fiji. tribal place-based histories, and more Through my husband and children I recently, a petition by the NZ History Teachers Association for the teaching of connect with Samoa. Māori and colonial history in schools: Storying our land “The New Zealand History Teachers' A well known Hawaiian proverb states: Association believes too few Kiwis ‘A‘ohe pau ka ‘ike i ka hālau ho‘okāhi: understand what brought the Crown and Māori together in the 1840 Treaty, ‘Not all knowledge is learned from one or how their relationship developed school’. The theme for the 2018 New over the decades since – partly because Zealand (NZ) Literacy Association’s schools are not required to teach it” conference in Papaioea/Palmerston (Redmond, 2019). As I considered North, Manawatu was ‘Literacy the idea of ‘literacy landscapes’, I was Landscapes’. In my keynote address, I reminded of indigenous storying and asked the question, ‘What is the world literacies that possibly did not spring view or prior knowledge that informs automatically to mind for most teachers your understanding of this idea?’ Styres and academics at the conference. Why? (2019) states that: Because not all knowledge or histories Storying is essentially the ways of local landscapes are valued in the we narratively describe ourselves same way by New Zealand schools, or as Indigenous peoples locally, by NZ educators. Stories of landscape nationally, and globally. Land is at histories are often told through books; once storied and relational informing however for Māori and Pacific peoples, the social, spiritual, and systemic storying or storytelling was an important norms and practices of a particular languaging practice, well before stories culture-sharing group in relationship were written into books. It is often to their places… Indigenous people through storying and remembering exist in deeply intimate and sacred stories that tikanga or cultural knowledge relationships with Land… it is the is shared. Frequently, storying also had relationship that comes before all embedded whakatauki or proverbial 13 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

sayings that spoke through metaphor, made them water. It was this incident hidden truths about human behaviour, that led to the name – Wairarapa: the and ways of being that supported people rarapa (flashing) of the wai (water). As to live through tikanga (correct customs Hau journeyed from there, he came to or protocols) in pono or tika (true or a river crossing where he sat and felt right ways). remorse. Looking into the water, he was sad as he saw Wairaka’s face reflected Haunui-A-Nanaia back at him –: Wai o Hine Wairaka Māori history and stories relating to (Water for his woman Wairaka) the landscapes of the Manawatu and referring to the tears he shed. We know Horowhenua tell the journeying story it today as ‘Waiohine’. Hau then carried of one man: Haunui-a-Nanaia, “who on up the east coast on his way home was the ancestor of the Te Ati Hau a (Rangitane Education, 2015). In this Paparangi people of the Whanganui story of Haunui-A-Nanaia and his region” (Rangitane, Education, 2015). naming of the landscape, we find not Hau named many of the maunga only information about the environment (mountains) and the awa (rivers) on – but also a Māori worldview or way of his journey across the motu (island) in seeing the world, to do with time and pursuit of his errant wahine (woman) place; deep connection to the land, Wairaka, who had run off with a slave. to tupuna (ancestors), memorialised Some say that he began his journey through the naming of landscapes that in Whanganui meaning Big Bay or reveal both ancient history and the Harbour, then moved on to Rangitikei: geographical features of those named which had been a day (rangi) of striding places. (tikei) – and then to Turakina (to be Connecting with children’s felled, or thrown down) where he used a fallen log as a bridge. In his pursuit prior linguistic and world of Wairaka he came to the Manawatu knowledge River, where the water made his heart In considering some of the modern (manawa) stand still (tu) because it was landscape features of Papaioea/ so cold. He carried on and named the Palmerston North, the conference Ohau River after himself (the place of committee selected the wind turbines of Hau). At Otaki he put his staff in the Otaki River to measure the depth (the place of the staff ). Then to Waikanae – where he saw the silver flashing of the kanae (mullet) in the wai (water). Then he climbed up the hill (now known as Rimutaka) – naming it Remutaka (to sit down). As Haunui sat there, he looked toward Lake Wairarapa and the reflection of the sun caught his eyes and 14 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

the Manawatu as a key image connecting “How would you get power from the with the ‘Literacy Landscapes’ theme wind?” and “What is the girl doing?” and gifted all participants a rock My colleague once told me a story of painting of wind turbines and hills. being in a class with Pasifika children, A text titled “Wind Power” (Quinn where a teacher introduced this book & Gaynor, 1995) was used in New by showing the front cover image of a Zealand classrooms for a number of girl with raised hands, and by asking the question, “What do you think the book is about?” Some of the Pacific children in that class responded with, ‘It’s about praising the Lord.” They were drawing on their funds of knowledge, connecting to the image, to make an inference that the book was about praising God, rather than about the power of the wind to generate electricity. It would have been more helpful if the teacher had initially supported those children to make prior knowledge connections to the schema or underlying theme of the book. When considering text choice, writing foci and class inquiries, we need to not only think about the stories behind ancient landscapes, but also reflect on the ‘reo-scape’ of NZ’s years, as a guided reading text to support changing demographics. The specific inquiries into the use of wind turbines prior linguistic, literacy and world to generate electricity. In the teacher’s knowledge systems held by children in notes for this text, suggested questions many linguistically diverse classrooms for introducing the text included: in Aotearoa NZ need to be explored 15 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

and validated to enable meaningful found that there was an overall need connection making between children’s for early learning services and schools existing funds of knowledge and text to improve their response to ‘culturally knowledge. A few years ago, a teacher in and linguistically diverse learners’, one of my Bilingual Education classes and to support their acquisition of the told me that one of her Pasifika children English language. Auckland is New when writing an asTTLe writing Zealand’s most culturally diverse city, assessment titled, ‘The Belle at the Ball’, with over 100 ethnicities and more than wrote, “The bell ring. I pick up my ball 150 languages spoken on a daily basis. and go inside.” Obviously his ‘kete of Most services and schools knew who prior knowledge’ for ‘belles and balls’ these learners were and had, to some did not connect with the assessment extent, taken steps to respond to their writer’s schema! language and culture. However, “only Responding to NZ’s 37 percent of services and 58 percent of schools intentionally promoted learning linguistically diverse student by using a home language or cultural population lens to support the learners’ acquisition The Ministry of Education’s ESOL of English, and to promote engagement (English for Speakers of Other with the learner, their parents and Languages) funding allocation to communities” (p. 5). Although ERO’s schools for the period 2 funding round report focused on Auckland schools, it in August 2018 was for 47,807 students is likely that other regions in NZ face in 1,485 schools. These students similar challenges regarding the need represent 176 different ethnic groups, for teachers to learn how to validate, 175 different countries of birth, and 135 normalise and utilise the full linguistic different languages. Within the 1,485 repertoire of emergent bilinguals at schools, numbers vary greatly with three school. schools having 300+ funded students, Remembering NZ’s literacy 12 schools with 200-299 students, and at the lower end: 580 schools with 1-9 teaching history students (Ministry of Education, 2018). In order to enable linguistically diverse These ESOL funded totals represent learners within NZ’s classrooms to only a portion of the linguistically experience schooling in culturally diverse or emergent bilingual student sustaining (Paris, 2012) or culturally population currently at school in NZ, revitalising ways, it is helpful to as not all bilingual students are funded remember the legacy of one of the by the ministry, due, either, to having historical figures of NZ’s literacy completed their funding allocation, or, teaching past. Sylvia Ashton Warner to not meeting the funding criteria. left a legacy focused on the essential The (2018) Education Review value placed on the beliefs, languages, Office (ERO) report on responding and cultures of the child at school. Her to linguistic diversity in Auckland pedagogy in rural schools with Māori 16 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

children used the words the children such as Franken, May & McComish themselves brought to school (their (2005, 2007) and Si‘ilata (2006, 2007, ‘key vocabulary’). Her students learned 2014, 2017). Cummins argued that the to read their own words. Ashton- boundaries between languages/dialects Warner supported her students to are fluid and socially constructed, and write books that valued and maintained that as emergent bilinguals gain access their cultures and beliefs, whilst also to their two languages, these languages providing a pathway to reading in become fused into a single system English. Ashton-Warner stated in (the common underlying proficiency her seminal text, Teacher: “First books (Cummins, 2008). He found that must be made of the stuff of the child” creative translation activities and (Ashton-Warner, 1963, p. 34) (Si‘ilata, “translanguaging” have a role to play to Gaffney & Stephenson, in press). enable learners to create multimedia texts The Pasifika Early Literacy that communicate in authentic ways in both L1 and L2 [the first language and Project second language]” (Cummins, 2008, p. Since 2014, the Ministry of Education 65). “Translanguaging” originated with has contracted a team of researchers and Williams (1996, 2000), who used it "...they had not previously valued or utilised the linguistic resources that Pasif ika learners were bringing with them to school."

professional learning and development in Welsh-medium education to name (PLD) facilitators from the University a pedagogical practice that switches of Auckland to work with teachers of between language modes – for example, Pasifika children in Tāmaki/Auckland reading is done in one language and schools to support them to draw on their writing in another. In essence, it own linguistic repertoires, as Ashton teaches students to receive curriculum Warner did: Through bilingual storying; content input in one language and through the writing and reading of their output it in another mode or genre in own bilingual stories; and through the another language (Si‘ilata, 2014, p. 22). reading of Pasifika dual-language texts Teachers realised through the PLD that provide windows into their own project that they held existing beliefs and other’s worlds (Si‘ilata, Gaffney, about their children’s language and Stephenson & McCaffery, 2015). This literacy capabilities. Often, they had work built on the international work of not previously valued or utilised the bilingual writers and researchers such linguistic resources that Pasifika learners as Baker (2011) and Cummins (1986, were bringing with them to school. One 2007, 2008) as well as local researchers teacher reflected deeply on how her 17 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

changed beliefs and pedagogical actions improvement teachers, principals and had impacted her students: PLD facilitators who supported Pasifika The bottom line is I failed this child children to succeed and to become and I have changed. Now I am really literate in linguistically and culturally emotional about this because if I failed sustaining ways. him how many other children have I? The Va‘atele Framework uses the And I’ve noticed that every single one metaphor of the double hulled deep sea of my children are now moving... And canoe in relation to Pasifika learners this has all taken part in the last month and their experiences at school. The or so… It’s happened… And often we double hulls and the voyaging of the think we know it all. Actually, we deep-sea canoe are compared with don’t. I used to think I was a damn Pasifika learners’ passage or journey good teacher and you woke me up through the schooling system as on that day. I had to have a really bilingual/bicultural people. Ideally these good check of myself and my teaching Pasifika learners would be in school practices and what was working and settings that support the development what wasn’t, and how I could change of their bilingualism, biliteracy and it and to this day it has affected me so biculturalism, enabling success not only greatly…The year 0-1’s shouldn’t be in the world of school, but also in the at level two yet. See all those names world of home and community. One hull up there? See how he has changed in may be seen to represent the language, his writing? Oh, my goodness, did you literacy, culture, and worldview of home, listen to those children? Did you hear while the second hull is representative the confidence? They are teaching me of the language, literacy, culture so much. Their language, their lifestyle and worldview of school. As with is being acknowledged and accepted a va‘atele, both hulls/ va‘a (or languages, in our classroom and I’ve actually got literacies, and cultures) should work goose bumps just thinking about it, in unity to ensure the safe passage of because it has changed them... And it the people on board. The platform/ has changed me. fata built over the two hulls is a bridge that helps to hold the whole va‘atele The Va‘atele Framework together, thus enabling the hulls/ va‘a to The Va’atele Framework was utilised move through the water as one vessel, in the Pasifika Early Literacy Project while also providing the stability needed as a framework on which to strengthen to sail through any storm (Si‘ilata, 2014, teacher practice. It was developed p. 251). in my doctoral work (Si‘ilata, 2014) Dimensions and indicators of which focused on Pasifika learner effective practice for Pasifika learners success, and demonstrated accelerated were developed from the literature and literacy achievement (Si‘ilata, Dreaver, from the research findings, and were Parr, Timperley & Meissel, 2012), used to analyse teacher practice. The through the work of effective teachers, dimensions included: 18 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

• Knowledge of Pasifika learners Pasifika-specific dimensions were used • Expectations of Pasifika learners as the overarching framework for the • Knowledge of Pasifika bilingualism, analysis of teaching practice, and form second language acquisition and the lens through which the data from literacy learning teachers and the observations of their • Instructional strategies, including practice were analysed and the results Pasifika languages as resources for articulated. learning Dimension 4: Use of • Pasifika connections with texts, instructional strategies world, language, and literacy knowledge including Pasifika languages • Partnerships with Pasifika families/ as resources for learning aiga and community knowledge In the initial project pilot (Si‘ilata et holders al. 2015), a number of (non-Samoan) This set of six dimensions of effective teachers read Samoan texts with their classroom practice for Pasifika learners, students, by using digital sound files each elucidated by two indicators, were of the texts that provided models of used to consider all of the evidence correct pronunciation. Some teachers collected, and were then applied to the asserted that they were now more open Va‘atele Framework. The description of to utilising children’s total language effective teacher practice described in resources, as well as family and cultural the dimensions and elucidated through knowledge and experiences in the the indicators was developed primarily classroom. Other teachers said that they through a top down process informed had developed greater awareness about largely by the relevant research their children’s bilingualism, and were literature. However, these indicators now viewing it as a resource rather than were checked in a more bottom-up a problem. Teachers supported their process against the practices of the learners to connect their own funds effective teachers, who were known to of knowledge with the schema in the be successful in promoting accelerated book, and enabled them to utilise the student achievement in literacy. The text structure to tell and write their own original six ‘dimensions of effective bilingual digital stories using iPads. The practice’ for learners in general, are transcript below illustrates Dimension 4a: described in Effective Literacy Practice Teachers explicitly teach English language in Years 1–4 (see Ministry of Education, and vocabulary by building on Pasifika 2003, p. 12). The six dimensions of home languages and oral practices. It is effective literacy practice were modified an example of ‘digital translanguaging’ to make them more specific to Pasifika (students using both receptive and learners and to validate the utilisation productive bilingual modes to create of their linguistic and cultural resources their own bilingual digital books, using within the New Zealand education a Samoan dual language reading book as space (see Table pp. 20-21). These a catalyst and model: 19 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

Table 1: Dimensions of Effective Practice for Pasifika Learners applied to the Va‘atele Framework (Si‘ilata, 2014)

Dimension Indicators Representative part of the va‘atele Knowledge 1a) Teachers analyse and The hull/va‘a of the va‘atele as of Pasifika use English language the foundation of the vessel learners and literacy data in their – the uniqueness of the canoe practice. is specific to the hulls and 1b) Teachers analyse and use the knowledge of the builder Pasifika home language to craft it according to the data and family/cultural conditions in which it will funds of knowledge. travel.

Expectations 2a) Teachers set high, The mast/tila that connects of Pasifika informed expectations for the hulls/va‘a with the sail/la, learners student learning which enabling it to withstand the build on Pasifika learners’ strength of the wind and to act aspirations and values. as a solid base from which to 2b) Teachers build effective furl the sail. teacher-student relationships that focus on learning and build Pasifika learner agency.

Knowledge 3a) Teachers know about The sail/la that enables the va‘a of Pasifika Pasifika bilingualism, to catch the wind – combining bilingualism, second language the strength of the hulls/va‘a second acquisition, and literacy and mast/tila, with the height language learning. of the sail, and the power of acquisition, 3b) Teachers use evidence the wind to enable greater and literacy from student data and speed and success toward the learning from practice to design journey’s end. learning sequences, and monitor progress in relation to Pasifika learners’ language and literacy needs.

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Use of 4a) Teachers explicitly teach The paddles/foe that are used instructional English language and by the paddlers to advance the strategies vocabulary by building on va‘a when there is no wind, including Pasifika home languages and that use the water to Pasifika and oral practices. generate the motion through languages as 4b) Teachers explicitly teach which the va’a sails. resources for strategies for written learning language, including use of Pasifika literacy practices.

Supporting 5a) Teachers support The platform/fata that Pasifika Pasifika learners to make connects the two hulls so connections meaningful connections that they sail as one vessel, with text, with Pasifika cultures, enabling the progress made world, experiences, languages, with one hull to benefit the language, literacies, texts and other hull. and literacy worldviews. knowledge 5b) Teachers provide opportunities for Pasifika learners to transfer knowledge, languages and literacies from one context to another.

Partnerships 6a) Teachers collaborate with The keel/ta‘ele running from with Pasifika Pasifika families/aiga stern to bow, which helps the families/ in identifying student va‘a maintain its stability and aiga and learning needs and valued straight movement despite the community outcomes. conditions – keeping the va’a knowledge 6b) Teachers build reciprocal ‘grounded’ and secure. holders relationships with Pasifika families/aiga and community experts to utilise their knowledge at school.

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[Teacher with new entrant five- Teacher: No sweetie, but I’m learning. year-olds creating their own digital Child 2: She’s English. She’s from England… stories about themselves using the dual language Samoan text as a structure]: Teacher: Yes, cos even though I’m a teacher, I never stop learning either. I have to go Teacher: Off you go, you guys carry on. home and do homework too. Children: Yay! (Reading the story they have Child: Cos you’re a English. You’re from written on their ipad): ‘O la‘u ‘ato England. ā‘oga lea. Here is my school bag. Teacher: I am from England, yes. Teacher: Okay do you maybe need to record It was evident that the teacher’s that one again if you can’t really hear willingness to put herself in the position it? of the learner, to privilege the linguistic Child 1: You need to delete it. knowledge of the children, and to create opportunities for them to connect Teacher: Okay so delete that one. You guys their Samoan linguistic and conceptual have another go at the sound file. knowledge with their English language Teacher & child together: ‘O la‘u ‘ato ā‘oga and literacy acquisition had a major lea. (Here is my school bag). impact on the children’s willingness to utilise their linguistic resources at Teacher: Wanna play it and see what it school. The use of those linguistic sounds like? resources had a direct impact on their Children play their sound recording: ‘O la‘u English language acquisition and on ‘ato ā‘oga lea. Here is my school bag. ‘O their biliteracy development. They la‘u pusa mea‘ai lea. Here is my lunch were also prompted to consider their box. ‘O la‘u tusi lea. Here is my book. teacher’s and their own linguistic and cultural identities as a result of reading Teacher: Let’s see if they’ve got their sound dual language texts together. file (plays the file). Awesome. You guys are way ahead. Let’s read it together Concluding thoughts (uses the digital text on the interactive For Pasifika learners at school in whiteboard to read with students): Aotearoa New Zealand, enacting the metaphorical double-hulled canoe, (or Teacher & children: What’s this one? We can linguistically and culturally sustaining read this one; we’re clever. ‘O la‘u tusi environment that privileges bilingual lea. And what does that one mean? and biliterate goals over monolingual Here is my book. ones), is more likely to elicit effective Child: How do you know how to do it? outcomes than an ‘English only’ approach. In order for Pasifika learners Teacher: Because Mrs Roberts has been to be successful at home and at school, practising at home! they need to strengthen and build Child: Are you Samoan? capacity and capability in both. We need 22 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

to transform our schools by challenging Education, (pp. 65-75) the hegemonic agenda that still privileges Education Review Office (2018). Responding western knowledge over indigenous and to language diversity in Auckland. minority language group knowledge Auckland, New Zealand: Author. Franken, M., May, S., & McComish, J. systems. English-medium classroom (2005). Pasifika languages research and teachers need to normalise and utilise guidelines project: Literature review. community languages, multiliteracies, Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of family and cultural knowledges within Education. the valued knowledges and pedagogies Franken, M., May, S., & McComish, of schooling, making them central to J. (2007). Language enhancing the the educational endeavour. Pasifika, and achievement of Pasifika (LEAP). other linguistically diverse learners can Downloaded from the world wide web be highly successful at school. Their on 8 April 2012 http://leap.tki.org.nz Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of utilisation of their language, biliteracy Education. and cultural resources is fundamental to Ministry of Education (2018). ESOL funded that success. Teachers can learn how to students: Statistical information period 2, teach Pasifika learners effectively, and in 2018. Auckland, New Zealand: Author. particular ways that connect with and Paris, D. (2012). Culturally Sustaining build on their languages, cultures, and Pedagogy: A Needed Change in Stance, identities, so that they can learn through Terminology, and Practice. Educational a curriculum that both teaches their Researcher 41(3), 93-97. worlds, and provides windows to other Quinn, P. & Gaynor, B. (1995). Wind Power. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning worlds. Only then, will these children and Media, Ministry of Education. their families understand that success at Rangitane Education (2015). Traditional school does not require their languages stories: The story of Haunui-a- and cultures to be left at the school gate. Nanaia. Retrieved from https:// rangitaneeducation.com/the-story-of- References haunui-a-nanaia/ Baler, C., 2011). Foundations of bilingual Redmond, A. (2019, February 5th). Petition education and bilingualism, 5th Ed. Bristol: reignites debate over teaching New Multilingual Matters. Zealand's colonial history in schools. Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority Stuff. Retrieved from https://www.stuff. students: A framework for intervention. co.nz/national/education/110346303/ Harvard Educational Review, 56(1), petition-reignites-debate-over-teaching- 18–36. new-zealands-colonial-history-in-schools Cummins, J. (2007). Rethinking monolingual Si‘ilata, R. (2006). Final research report instructional strategies in multilingual to Ministry of Education: ‘Supporting classrooms. The Canadian Journal of Pasifika bilingual teacher aides in Applied Linguistics, 10(2), 221–240. mainstream primary classrooms’. Auckland, Cummins, J. (2008). Teaching for transfer: New Zealand: Auckland UniServices. Challenging the two solitudes assumption Si‘ilata, R. (2007). The Pasifika Teacher Aide in bilingual education. In J. Cummins & Handbook; Supporting Pasifika Bilingual N.H. Hornberger (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Teacher Aides in Mainstream Classes. Language and Education, 2(5), Bilingual Auckland, New Zealand: Ministry of 23 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

Education. Williams, C. (1996). Secondary education: Si‘ilata, R. (2014). Va‘a Tele: Pasifika learners Teaching in the bilingual situation. In riding the success wave on linguistically and C. Williams, G. Lewis, & C. Baker culturally responsive pedagogies. University (Eds). The language policy: Taking stock. of Auckland: Unpublished PhD thesis. Llaangefni, Wales: Cai. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/23402 Williams, C. (2000). Welsh-medium Si‘ilata, R., Dreaver, K., Parr, J., Timperley, and bilingual teaching in the further H., & Meissel, K. (2012). Tula’i Mai! education sector. International Journal Making a Difference to Pasifika Student of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Achievement in Literacy. Final Research 3(2), 129–148. Report on the Pasifika Literacy Professional Development Project 2009 – Author 2010. Auckland: Auckland UniServices Ltd. http://www.educationcounts.govt. nz/publications/pasifika_education/ literacy-professional-development- project-2009-2010 Si‘ilata, R. K., Gaffney, J. & Stephenson, J. (Accepted for publication, final editing). Translanguaging and bilingual storying with New Zealand Pasifika emergent bilingual learners. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Special Issue – Emergent Rae Si‘ilata is a lecturer in Biliteracy- Biliteracy in Early Childhood. Pasifika at the University of Auckland Si‘ilata, R. K., Gaffney, J. S., Stephenson, J., & McCaffery, J. (2015). Scaffolding in the Faculty of Education and New Entrant Pasifika Children into Social Work. Her work focuses on English Medium Schooling – Design and bilingualism and Bilingual Education, Implementation of New Entrant Pilot Maori education, Pasifika education, Programme (PNEP) Gālulue Fa‘atasi. second language acquisition, reciprocal Final milestone report to the Ministry of whanau-school partnerships. She directs Education. two Ministry of Education projects: the Si‘ilata, R., Samu, T. & Siteine, A. Pasifika Early Literacy Project and the (2017). The Va‘atele Framework: Pasifika Teacher Aide Project, and has Redefining and Transforming Pasifika Education. In E.A McKinley & L.T. been a consultant to Talking Matters. Smith (eds.), Handbook of Indigenous Rae is interested in bilingual/biliterate Education. Singapore: Springer. Retrieved academic outcomes, and is committed from: https://link.springer.com/ to teacher professional development in referenceworkentry/ bilingualism/biliteracy. She supports 10.1007/978-981-10-1839-8_34-1 teachers to critically examine notions doi:10.1007/978-981-10-1839-8_34-1. of power and success, and to value Styres (Kanien’keha:ka), S. (2019). Literacies and utilise the language and cultural of land: Decolonizing narratives, storying resources of whānau/aiga within and literature. Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education: Mapping the long classroom learning. view. New York, US: Routledge. 24 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019 Kiwis, Geckos, School Journal, Annuals, Susan Paris, and me, Kate Kate de Goldi

Kia ora, Talofa lava, and warm Pacific never works that way. Instead, I kept greetings. Thank you for inviting me to coming back to four fledgling writers I speak. knew, all working on projects for children. Three of them were writing fiction, I considered a number of different titles for acquainting themselves with their voice this talk, none quite right, and then, this on the page, discovering their fictional last week while working with a group of preoccupations. They were all reading public librarians I focused on some of the widely in the form too, roaring through the writers I particularly admire and who have enduring backlist of children’s literature, influenced me as both a reader and a writer, appreciating more deeply the contours of and came to EL Konigsburg – to whom I the form. The fourth writer was a diarist often want to pay homage. I was struck all and essayist, whose occasional pieces on over again by the jaunty, prolix titles of her art, on the existential and the everyday, early novels, which, to me at least, embody were limpid and layered and – to my mind so much that is vital and ungovernable – perfect for young readers - but had never and important in great writing for and gone beyond private distribution because about children – particularly in the current contemporary publishing for children in book economy where writers’ necessary Aotearoa has somehow never developed a urges are ruthlessly hostage to marketing creative non-fiction component. Why ever doctrine. So in the spirit of Konigsburg’s not, I wondered? fabulous Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William What were the publication prospects McKinley, and me, Elizabeth, this talk for these writers? They all write for that is called: Kiwis, Geckos, Annuals, School satisfyingly omnivorous audience, the Journal, Susan Paris, and me, Kate middle reader, the ones between ‘confident I’m going to think aloud about solo’ (let’s say 7 or 8 years), and what I think children’s literature here in Aotearoa/ of as the ‘immediately pre-hormonal,’ let’s New Zealand, its past and present, and say 11, 12 years. Their work is original, its sometimes awkward and contested quietly complex, and beautifully crafted, relationship with education, by way of the with vocabularies that challenge and project I’ve been collaborating on over the delight. It is not melodramatic or crisis- last several years, and with an eye on the driven. It’s not concept or design-driven. global and local book economy, too. It has no toilet humour, aliens, horses, or I went for a thinking run one day in fairies. It is immensely deft and subtle, often November 2014. I wanted to think about funny. It has emotional and psychological the novel I was writing, but of course it substance. It is – and I make no apology for 25 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

this word – literary. But it is also, perhaps, to replicate them. Hence the torrent of ‘quieter’ than much current writing for derivative fantasy, dystopian, and operatic children, the many offerings I think of as realist fiction triggered by the successes headlong, even hectic. A publisher with of a few brilliant, innovative authors. It’s antennae set to the market and ‘trending’ understandable – traditional publishing titles (that is, 99 percent of publishers) and bookselling have been in tumult would hesitate, well aware that the over the last decade, shoring up against books for this audience making the most the encroachment of digital platforms, noise and filling bookshop shelves are behemoth online booksellers and overwhelmingly series titles – formulaic, discounts wielded like weapons. And YA’s slapstick, fantastical, generic – and, of subject is turmoil, trial, and alteration – an course, a delicious part of childhood attractive one in this turbulent historical reading. (Grown up reading, too, for that moment. At its worst, we get disease- matter). of-the-week weepies or overwrought But these books and their authors souls punching their way blindly to self- tend to crowd out the rest; they shout over realisation; at its very best, you have the the top of the more nuanced fictions, the transformation stories of, say, Elizabeth stories that shape an intelligence and a Knox and Frances Hardinge, in which moral compass, the writing that accustoms the febrile years of adolescence become readers to complexity, to the myriad moral the stage set for the play of big ideas, and shadings of human being. The current stories are wrought with the full tool-bag market doesn’t run in favour of those four of literary craftsmanship. On the other hopeful writers. Moreover, in New Zealand, as elsewhere – though perhaps more woundingly here – children’s publishing lists have, in the last decade, substantially diminished, or withdrawn to Australia, or closed up shop completely, side-lining their experienced and deeply read editors (and, sadly, leaving a number of mid-career writers stranded). In any case, literary fiction publishing for the 7-12 age group has, over the last decade, measurably slowed – in inverse proportion to the number of YA and picture books tumbling forth. There’s a complex confluence of reasons for this, but YA’s explosion is, in some part at least, due to publishing’s inherent conservatism – its bottom-line induced need to carry on reproducing past successes, or to furiously scope other publishers' successes and try 26 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

end of the seesaw is the picture book habit: the capacity to be alone but never with all its nursery charm or sophisticated lonely. The appetite for exploration and beauty; often the highly curated child of happenstance. The habit of discernment several doting parents: artist, writer, editor, through comparison and contrast. An and designer. At best: the work of Shaun expanding vocabulary with which to name Tan – startlingly original, philosophical, and think. A sense of literature as both disturbing. Or Hairy Maclary, a perfectly mirror and window. You will all remember pitched on-the-knee story with seamless this period. Certainly, it was those reading integration of image and text, that rewards years that constructed me, as both a reader countless re-readings and becomes part and a writer, and helped lay, somehow, the of childhood’s DNA. At worst: over- coordinates of my character. aestheticised, arid design triumphs with The post-War period of the middle little story or language adventure. Or, 20th century saw an astonishing flowering homogenous verse stories with indifferent of literature for this age group, and a design and production values, the bastard critical substructure to name, explore, and child of the marketing and accounts buttress it. By the late 1970s New Zealand departments. children’s fiction and illustration was also Somewhere between these two – the experiencing its own cultural flowering, demarcations are porous – lies middle when (in an inversion of the current fiction, the prototypical children’sclimate) a fully-fledged and purposeful literature, whose tropes were laid down publishing industry met the story at its curious beginnings (it being the firepower and sophisticated draftsmanship changeling offspring of English clerics – of – to name just a few: Barry Faville, George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll and Janice Marriott, Tessa Duder, Bill Taylor, Charles Kingsley, writing, they believed, Gavin Bishop, Robyn Belton – and the for an adult market). Of course, all really quartet who represent the summit of that good children’s books have always been golden period: Maurice Gee, Jack Lasenby, read by adults, too. And plenty of ten-year Joy Cowley, and Margaret Mahy. From olds have vaulted out of their cohort and these four came that cascade of characters raided the YA and adult shelves – or for who are now part of our cultural DNA: that matter, the picture book bins at the Laura Chant, Tycho Potter, Hannah and library. But any list of Great Children’s Shadrach, Jonasi, Mr Wilberforce, Kitty Books is dominated by stories written Wix, Harry Wakatipu, Denny and his for that matchless period when a child is gang. The New Zealand book world has still free from the tyranny of adolescent mutated many times around them but Joy, self-examination, when they still look Jack, and Maurice, all in their eighties, outwards, collecting, collating, codifying, continue to produce work of considerable and commentating the world around them invention and depth. – the mysterious world, fashioned by those They’re still doing the heavy lifting for most perplexing animals: adult humans. NZ middle fiction, in part because they And it is usually these books and this can. They’re established. They’re cherished period that solidify the lifelong reading and bankable names on a publishing list. 27 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

But mostly, they’re preeminent, I believe, ‘entertained’. And fewer or deceased New because they have always written what Zealand children’s lists in multinational they must – the stories that propel them companies. Add all that up and you have to their desks, that are insistent messages a dispiriting scenario. Perhaps the most from their unconscious, translated and dispiriting part of all, is the patronising crafted with rigour for the page. I’m not assumption that middle readers most saying they have closed their eyes to the want formula and froth. Not to say farts. commerce of publishing and the sense of They want it sometimes. We all want it an audience – quite the contrary: they have sometimes. And why does the description needed to earn an income from books. ‘literary’ cause so much discomfort when But they have won audience on their own it’s attached to a children’s book? terms – by writing books that needed to When literary middle fiction remains be written, not by anatomising a consumer unpublished or disappears beneath the group. And I suppose you could say their clamour of series fiction and other books good fortune was to write at a time when fashioned according to the dubious publishing investment in a writer was a priorities of a marketing department, long-term commitment. a great number of things are lost from I don’t believe that commitment to the page. Nuanced character. Complex children’s books as a literature is nearly ideas. Rich and challenging vocabulary. so evident in today’s book economy, and Layered story. Metaphoric and symbolic particularly in books for the middle reader. substructure. The music of writing. Tonal As ever, there are notable exceptions to subtly. Moral shading. Existential growth. the general trend – the aforementioned [I’m quite aware that this litany national treasures and a few others here, amounts to a pedagogic mission statement. and some startling writers outside our Too right. But I’ll come back to that.] country: Geraldine McCaughrean, There have been other losses for Polly Horvath, Ursula Dubosarsky, Jerry children’s publishing in Aotearoa over the Spinelli, to name just four. The most likely last twenty years. Vanishing review space. place to find these authors, though, is (God Bless New Zealand Books, and more the public library, not your bookshop. I recently, The Sapling). Fewer books reviewed. understand the problem. Bookselling’s a Plot rehearsal and age recommendation in parlous business. Certain determinations place of analysis. And what about those must be made. Some writers’ works may very helpful intermediate publications only be fleetingly in stock. Some writers – magazines, story collections, curated won’t make it to print because their work anthologies – the publications that provide sits uneasily within current publishing a platform for the work of developing perceptions. Too restrained. Too dense. writers? With one exception – the School Too demanding. Too literary. Add to that Journal – there are none now. There were the idea of the writer as a commodity, a never many. It’s painfully true, too, that social media presence selling themselves New Zealand – outside the universities – as much as their work. And the persistent has little critical infrastructure nourishing notion that middle readers must always be the form, so that most writers publish 28 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

into a vacuum; there is no broad cultural All this rolled round in my head as I discussion, no grunty public dialectic ran. about the form and substance of our At some point, and now I can’t literature for young people, to encourage remember why, I suddenly thought and inflame its practitioners. And it about the annuals of my childhood, those seems very difficult for the children’s glorious pot pouris of reading across a book community (writers, publishers, variety of forms, including plenty of comics booksellers, blogs, awards panels, funding (publications that were slightly frowned on agencies) to move beyond pieties or in our house). Girl’s Crystal. Princess Tina. boosterism in regard to the New Zealand Pinky and Perky. Beano. I remembered form. Actually, there is almost no talk particularly a Bunty annual – in my sister’s about the form. Over the last fifteen years, Christmas pillowcase when she was eight, the children’s author conferences have and which she was still occasionally been largely preoccupied with the business reading when she was eighteen, because, of business: the market, what it (allegedly) she said – and perhaps this has been the wants and how one might deliver to it. enduring pleasure of annuals – it was like Building profile, blogging, strategising for Mary Poppins’ carpetbag, throwing up international publication. Story, language, unexpected treasures, apparently forever. image, texts, are almost never under Mysteriously, there was always something discussion. At the most recent Aotearoa/ she hadn’t seen before. New Zealand Publishers' conference the We should make an Annual, I thought. forum on children’s publishing was full A miscellany of stories, comics, essays, to bursting, because, unlike the rest of the poems, art, games, how-tos and other industry, children’s publishing numbers are diversions. A contemporary miscellany, in climbing. And what was the subject under the playful spirit of the old annuals, but discussion? How can we give children what without their noxious imperial, Anglophile, they want? Could there be a more wrong- gendered values. A literary miscellany that headed question? In the golden ages of would bring entirely new work, by New children’s publishing, publishing charted Zealanders, in a variety of forms and the way ahead; it wasn’t supine in the face moods to a smart, hungry New Zealand of crass market values. cohort that was currently underserved. A

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miscellany that would provide a much- quite different to our canon: meditative, needed outlet for established practitioners intellectually playful, philosophical, and new ones. sometimes frisky, always aesthetically I knew immediately who We should sophisticated. Books wrought by be. The only publisher who would European sensibilities, you might say. You entertain a publication of this nature – a could see this as a stealthy bit of literary complex design challenge, expensive, and and cultural imperialism. Or just a new unprecedented in Aotearoa – was Gecko piquant element in the book production Books, a unique entity in this country, soup that has, in turn, prompted creative whose brand promises ‘curiously good’ departures by some New Zealand writers books. I have always liked the indefinables and illustrators for children – resulting in in that phrase, curiously good. It’s Gecko – books which have, in a tidy circularity, then in the shape of Julia Marshall – who has been published by Gecko Press. I’d argue sought excellent children’s titles around that Snake and Lizard by Joy Cowley and the globe, translated and published Gavin Bishop, Barbara Else’s Fontania them in Aotearoa and sent them out series, Dappled Annie and the Tigrish by Mary McCallum, The Longest Breakfast again into the English-speaking market. by Jenny Bornholdt & Sarah Wilkins, for Characteristically, Julia was entirely just some examples, wouldn’t have been enthusiastic about the annual project. published here without the presence of It was interesting to be up close to Gecko. Gecko has made a home in New Gecko’s determined brand – at work in Zealand for a certain kind of writer and children’s publishing here for more than their books. Smart publisher that she is, a decade. Julia’s ‘mission’ was avowedly to Julia Marshall’s rubric ‘curiously good’ – introduce into the New Zealand cultural evocative, but cunningly mutable – enables bloodstream a kind of book for children her to build a list guided by the real criterion: her own idiosyncratic instincts. These are as quicksilver as the notion of ‘curiously good’ – though just as reliable a publishing vision as any – and such is their sureness that over thirteen years the reading public has come to feel just as surely as their progenitor what the Gecko brand is. What it isn’t, is perhaps easier to articulate – and working with Julia on the annual project – always fascinating – clarified this. Gecko does not in any way do ‘Kiwi’ (lower and upper case K) – neither the bird, nor any of the ubiquitous motifs and themes of New Zealand children’s publishing – or at 30 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

least not self-consciously. And – even echoed a grumble more staunchly – Gecko is avowedly that dogged NZ allergic to any suggestion of the ‘teaching children’s literature moment’ within trade publication. I have for many decades always been with them on the former. and is asserted Impossible not to think, when surveying quite baldly by the New Zealand picture book scene – Betty Gilderdale in and to paraphrase CS Lewis in his famous A Sea Change, her critique of Tolkein’s Ring - ‘too many f… pioneering survey ing anthropomorphised kiwis.’ But what of 145 years of New about imaginative writing as morality Zealand children’s text or instruction manual? Well, to literature: ‘…New quote the old saw: if you want to send a Zealand fiction for the young,’ wrote message, use the postal service. Of course Gilderdale in 1982, ‘is overwhelmingly one doesn’t overtly teach in imaginative didactic and earnest in intention.’ That is work. Goes without saying. I’ve been a quite the ticking off. little haunted, too, for some years, by a Perhaps, speculated Eva that evening, bracing conversation with a German post- perhaps the culprit is Aotearoa’s success grad student of children’s literature, in with educational reading programmes, which she’d held New Zealand children’s its focus on literacy, and its cultural literature up for inspection and found preoccupation with the functional – a it pickled in educational zeal. I can’t legacy no doubt of the settler experience. remember the name of this dauntless Yes, she said, warming to her thesis, literacy young woman but I’ll call her Eva. and pedagogy consistently trumped "What is it with your children’s literary considerations in the practice literature?" she said to me one evening and critical assessment of our children’s after a children’s literature event. So literature; thus, antic, untrammeled story obsessed with the teaching moment and and language is largely absent from NZ so lacking in the imaginative flight of children’s books; instead, a tendency to the kind beloved in European literature. the worthy, to helplessly instruct, reins in ‘Where’s your Baron Munchausen?’ she language play and story reach. asked, accusingly. ‘Your Struwwelpeter? As This is all eminently debatable, is so often the case, my response came only of course. For a start, Eva had glided the next morning in the shower, where right over the aforementioned golden many thrusts are parried and arguments quarter-century, those voices which arose won. ‘What about Jack Lasenby?’ I immediately following Gilderdale’s survey, thought. His glorious counter-cultural when the relative plainchant of NZ creations – Harry Wakatipu, Uncle Trev, children’s literature broke into some pretty and Aunt Effie, larrikins all, peddling interesting polyphonics. And what about fantastical exploits and explanations. Margaret Mahy? I might have said to her But Lasenby’s tricksters not- – there was some stonking imaginative withstanding, Eva did poke an old bear; she flight and language pyrotechnics. Though 31 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

Eva, smart girl, would doubtless have of our children’s literature – especially called Mahy for the outlier she really is. in its long infancy; and a discernable Someone, as Margaret put it herself, who strain of that tendency survives still in occupied an imaginative and existential libraries, bookshops, classrooms, and book fault line: she was most decidedly a New awards. And – notwithstanding Mona Zealander but one whose creative engine Minum, Falter Tom, Anthony Holcroft’s had been built by story cultures on the Orchards of Heaven, and a large chunk other side of the world, whose muse of the Mahy oeuvre – it is true that our demanded the immaterial, and agents children’s literature tradition has been of anarchy – pirates, witches, lions, and overwhelmingly, sometimes thuddingly sorcerers – not paddocks, pukeko, or realist. And perhaps, we have been too punga. So, while in the fullness of time easily satisfied with the mere fact of Mahy has been properly acknowledged as Aotearoa/NZ experience merely ‘being a great children’s writer and an important on the page’. True, too, that action and the intellectual presence in our culture, material world have been much favoured nevertheless it took trade publishers over interiority. And probably, yes, an outside of this country to recognize her affection for the edifying, extractable genius, and for a good deal of her writing theme has too often trumped stylistic life her own culture – busy with a cultural and linguistic nuance. Our children’s nationalist programme – did not recognize non-fiction, for example, has stayed very her as a New Zealand writer. straight – often drear – in voice, design, But anyway, Eva had found final and imaginative reach. impregnable proof of our children’s Then again, isn’t it all a matter of degree literature’s love affair with the pedagogic. and deftness. To disavow the ‘teaching And of course! she said in summary – moment’ – education – in children’s your primary, your most enduring and literature seems utterly specious, not to loved title for children is an educational mention ahistoric. All writers and artists publication. She waved the School Journal for children (and publishers) whenever, at me and retired in triumph. wherever, embark on each project with Interestingly, Julia at Gecko, too, has bulging baggage: they bring their lived always viewed the School Journal with experience, their learning, their belief metaphoric crucifix and garlic in hand – systems, moral compasses, and cultural as a publication exemplifying how not to biases. Educational intent of one sort of proceed with trade books for children. another is always at work and in every text. A kind of anti-manifesto. Too earnest. Education may have been more explicit, Too teacherly. Too flat-footed. And too even doctrinal, two hundred years ago obviously intoning New Zealand culture. but writing and publishing today is just as I’ve had sundry shower conversations intentional: story, language, and image are with absent Eva since our encounter, and a the tools of persuasion: listen and look and few with Julia, too. Sure, I have conceded, learn, they say, this is my view of the world. literacy and learning concerns have always Moreover, to be grudging about the coloured the practice and assessment School Journal is, I think, to misunderstand 32 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

the history and fruitful entwining of education and trade publishing for children in Aotearoa. Certainly, the Journal is loved and venerable (112 years old), and without question has great cultural significance. It has been – and soberingly, increasingly is again – potentially the ‘first and only contact with literature and the arts’ for many New Zealand children. I’m paraphrasing Clarence Beeby, the progressive educationalist whose visionary policies ushered in the Journal’s great post-war period. It is undeniable, too, that have sought work from writers and visual the Journal has always been propelled by artists whose customary audience is an adult educational purpose. It has necessarily one, quietly reminding those who cared to published work that complements notice that successful work for children classroom and curriculum needs. It is the is not the sole province of designated school journal after all, compiled in four children’s writers and illustrators. parts for use across every primary and Moreover, as a miscellany of story, poetry, intermediate school cohort. drama, non-fiction, photography and I have never believed, though, that the art, the School Journal remains the only School Journal represents proof positive of platform that has consistently provided a our children’s publishing’s default to the diversity of voices and forms (or literacies prosaic and pedagogic. Happily enough, I to use the educational sector’s word) for think the reverse has most often been the young readers. It has both mirrored to New case. A survey of its editions over the last Zealand children their place, their history, sixty years – as Greg O’Brien provided and their lived experience and opened a in his excellent centennial history of the window on different realities, in Aotearoa Journal, A nest of Singing Birds – is powerful and beyond. It has been a lifesaving evidence that the School Journal has for alternative home for New Zealand the last 70 years delivered to children in children’s literature and art – warm, steady, Aotearoa art and writing of the first order. appropriately disciplined and imaginatively Certainly – and crucially – the publication adventurous – when trade publishing has has been the great, and often sole, nursery been unable to properly parent. for emerging children’s writers and artists It made instant and perfect sense to over that time – not least Margaret Mahy me, therefore, that the crucial person to who had entire editions devoted to her bring on board in the making of an annual work. Importantly, too, successive editors for young readers in Aotearoa was the 33 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

current commissioning editor of the School As my earlier mission statement about Journal – someone who regularly curated literary values might suggest, Susan and a miscellany for intermediate school I went about Annual with the heat and students, someone who would relish a purpose of evangelicals. We wanted a publication that picked up on the Journal’s game-changing publication – one that estimable features – including material suggested a new way of thinking about the that reflected Aotearoa in all its 21st pre-teen and their reading life. The Annual century plurality – but a publication that was to be the very definition of reading for would be unshackled from the Journal’s pleasure – but we took it as axiomatic that one (understandable) limitation – the pleasure and learning are not mutually requirement to feed a cluster of competing exclusive. Of course it would be educational needs: Ministry, a six-stranded curriculum, too. It’s base precept was that middle parents, teachers, and every kind of child readers would have diverting material in in school. Susan Paris, editor of Parts 3 familiar forms – visual and written – but and 4 of the Journal was perhaps the only they could and should also be challenged person who could have steered the Annual and delighted by forms they likely hadn’t project home, fluent as she is in the delicate come across before – art commentary, dialogue of commissioning and editing, historical photos, personal essay, flash enmeshed in the story and language world non-fiction, satire: entertainment and of the cohort we were aiming to excite, education plaited together. and with more than a decade’s experience We had a strong sense of our reader. in bringing a complex publication to print We would commission with that 9-13 year five times a year. In very real terms, the old reader at the forefront of our thoughts, Annual – though midwifed with generosity but with an unshakeable belief, too, that and skill by Gecko Press – is the true child good material fundamentally resists age of the School Journal – School Journal banding. The Annual’s reader might also be Unplugged, you might say – not only seven or seventy. They could be a seasoned because it was conceived in the Journal’s reader or looker, we reckoned, or an likeness, but because its editors were incipient one; or with luck, they might be comprehensively shaped by the Journal someone with an undiscovered reading self during their own education. There were waiting to unfurl, someone who would be godparents, too – both high-minded and drawn to the variety of moods between the productively wayward. The Puffin Annuals covers, who would browse and linger, then of the mid ‘seventies, two publications settle to a piece; someone who would come that drew on Puffin’s stable of remarkable and go, each time finding, mysteriously, a artists and writers, including – in another new piece that satisfied their developing lovely circularity – New Zealand and the self – just like my sister with her Bunty. School Journal’s own Jill McDonald whose We knew that the age group we had buoyant work provided the cover art. in mind was sharp, multi-literate, questing, We were also heavily influenced by The playful, imaginative, insatiable, and up for Goodies Annual 1974, anarchic, irreverent, anything – whimsy, seriousness, beauty, ridiculous, and necessary. silliness. These readers snarfed series books 34 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

for their comfort and reliability, but they comfort and discipline of constraints but were hungry for narrative and linguistic who could produce from a brief something challenge too. They also had available the that was demonstrably their own. Secondly most time for reading they would ever – we would publish alongside established know. We knew all this, not because we authors new voices for children, including anatomised or focus-grouped that reading those whose customary audience was adult audience, but because we had once been but whose work suggested they were well those readers ourselves. We proceeded acquainted with the ‘young eye’ – the eye on the basis that the only reliable way to so necessary for a pre-adult readership – produce original and satisfying material those practitioners who had a strong sense for, say, an 11 year old is to closely interview of both wonder and absurdity at work in the your own 11-year old self. world. We wanted very much to challenge We needed to curate Annual’s content, the conventional wisdom – in Aotearoa at rather than invite submissions. In order least – around what might be ‘suitable’ for to ensure as far as possible a balance of children. We also wanted to keep close the material – in form, theme, gender, setting, idea that a reader, young or old, need not culture, mood – we would provide briefs understand everything immediately – that with gentle parameters, then match them really interesting writing and art invite with appropriate contributors – writers many return visits, new shadings revealing and artists who appreciated both the themselves as the reader grows.

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Annual and Annual 2 have been There is artwork of richness and variety: bestsellers. There was an appetite out The Ponsonby Madonna, a cardboard there for multiple reading forms for Rangimatua, a rainbow of tivaevae, a young readers. And there was certainly spraycan whare and whanau, Henry an appetite for rich reading experiences, Christian-Slane’s brooding images of the ones that challenged and surprised. Other Central Plateau, Gavin Mouldey’s maps hunches were confirmed, too. Miscellanies and Jonathon King’s sheep farm in space. can offer something for everybody, adept And that high-minded litany I recited and reluctant readers alike – readers earlier: nuanced character, rich vocabulary, with a visual bent, readers who want the layered story, metaphoric substructure, propulsion of narrative and those who language play and the music of writing, relish the heightened language of poetry, complex ideas, moral shading, tonal subtlety readers who want their funny bones tickled, – I believe it is all in play. In: those in contemplative mood, those who Steve Braunias satire: ‘Selfies’ starring want the diversion of a game or puzzle. Lorde, Taylor Swift, and Richie McCaw. Moreover, unlike a novel, a miscellany Joanna Orwin’s Seeds, a story that is not a confronting or onerous prospect considers the narrow options for colonial for the reluctant reader. Those readers can girls. commit to short reading times but still James Brown’s found poem composed experience the satisfaction of completion entirely of lines from school newspapers. – a story here, an article there – and come Sam Duckor-Jones’ wistful meditation back later for more. on his beanie collection. First and foremost the Annuals are David Larsen’s dazzling speculative for reading pleasure and adventure. We fiction in which Mozart is kidnapped and wanted all the obvious forms – stories, taken to the 20th century to hear Prokofiev’s poetry, articles, how tos, diversions, and ‘Classical Symphony’. glorious illustration. But we wanted new Bernard Beckett’s essay on logic puzzles forms, too for younger readers – essay, and how to fall in love with maths. flash non-fiction, satire, parody, and pieces Ben Brown’s tender memoir about about art. We got it all in spades. his mother and the family’s white rabbit, There’s excellent nonsense in both Honky. Annuals. A rhyming ninja. A surreal Whiti Hereaka poignant story, snapper floating in the summer sky, magic Stargazing, about rites of passage and parsley and emergency haiku and a board summer holiday rituals. game with a naked grandmother. A zebra Barbara Else’s spiky fiction about mean with an inferiority complex, Invercargill girls at boarding school. cyclists dressed in monkey suits, a dog Lloyd Jones’ deft mix of the instructional driving a car, a knitted digestive system, and the sensuous in his essay on how to a taxonomy of New Zealand biscuits and body surf. slices with faux scientific names, and Kate ‘The Glove,’ by Damian Wilkins, Sheppard on the sausage sizzle outside the a pitch-perfect story about a family’s supermarket. I think Eva would be pleased. complicated response to grief. 36 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

Greg O’Brien’s ‘Get rid of Fetu Fotofoto Day’, a sumptuous visual and lexical mash Island up that invites wonder and imaginative adventure. It’s always yellow inside The grunt and rhapsody of birth amid a and the nylon is an island West Coast storm in Renata Hopkins story for the to and from the grass. ‘Mud Prayer’. I’ll finish by laying the credit for all In the corner, some sand this where it should properly be: with the from last summer’s foot-stick contributors to the Annuals, the artists and and that forgotten sock. writers. Astonishingly, out of the seventy- Night makes a planetarium three people we approached, all but two of torch dust mosquito, were up for the gig. All took our briefs of hand toe torso.

and made them decidedly their own. Most exceeded expectations. Most wonderfully, Morning is gentle nose. Sun on sleeping-bag-red several new writers and artists for children with the lurk of grass. have jumped into bigger projects prompted by their Annual piece. When the zipper goes The Annual is made for reading aloud: the yellow goes an important part of classroom literacy and to green, to blue nurturing a love of literature. It seems right to day, to this to go out with Lynley Edmeades’ beautiful now, this now, poem on awakening in a tent, ‘Island’, now this. which contains all the sleepy solitariness and cresting anticipation of childhood, time elongating and the day opening out marvelously. Author Kate De Goldi is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors. She has published a range of short stories, collections and novels for adults and children. De Goldi's novel The 10pm Question (2008) was published to critical acclaim both in New Zealand and overseas, quickly becoming an iconic piece of New Zealand literature. De Goldi has been extensively involved with numerous programmes, committees, and organisations focused on creative writing, education and New Zealand literature. 37 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION What to watch out for in children’s publishing in 2019 Rob Southam

I know we are all completely serious Reina Telgemeier, Roald Dahl, and Tom about children becoming readers for life Gates, will continue to absolutely delight and building that all important school to readers in years ahead. They have found a home literacy connection, so for us by far joyful place in hearts and minds that lights the biggest trend for 2019 would have to an emotional spark and will help motivate be finding the right book at the right time children to read more. for every child! What follows is a look at 10 global 2.Humour trends coming through that could help Nothing typifies this trend more than make that all important school to home Craig Smith’s Wonky Donkey! What a connection much more possible, and world-wide ride it’s been for a book first definitely much more fun! published by Scholastic NZ in 2009. After 1. Old favourites and back list the Scottish Granny read Wonky Donkey on YouTube last year Wonky Donkey books became such hot property it was virtually It’s vital not to ignore this trend and note impossible to get hold of, with rapid fire that within the children’s book industry reprints going on around the world. It there is great longevity for some of our all- topped all book sales in the USA across time favourites; books like Hairy Maclary, all genres, not just children’s books, for The Little Yellow Digger, Pig the Pug, The several weeks, beating the likes of Lee Very Cranky Bear, series like Harry Potter, Childs and John Grisham. It is still # 1 on Geronimo Stilton, Pokemon, Tom Gates, Amazon and number # 1 on the American Captain Underpants, and books from Bestsellers list, and it’s the # 1 best-selling the likes of David Walliams, Ahn Do, children’s book in the UK. As I write this it

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is # 2 behind Harry Potter on Amazon UK, and It has also topped bestseller lists in Australia and South Africa. The Wonky Donkey phenomenon has been truly mind boggling! It’s little wonder that humour is the bedrock of engagement for children. These books elevate fun and pleasure and addictive reading behavior more than any other single trend. There is so much to look out for in 2019 in this genre with positive storylines that communicate joyfully to readers. As an example make sure you look out for Australian comic Cal Wilson’s new book: Here’ssome news for you around a George and the Great Bum Stampede! picture book with a really positive story 3. Fantasy line. Alpacas with Maracas has been chosen as the Australian and New Zealand As we all know fantasy is a stalwart in 2019 Simultaneous Storytime book. You children’s book publishing. The fantasy will find information in Scholastic Book genre maintains its popularity for 2019, Club and on the Scholastic website about and will never go away. Magical realism registering for this inspiring and free event and creatures such as unicorns and dragons on Wednesday 22 May 2019. The aim is lead the way for 2019. Fantasy is a story to get well over 1 million kids engaged in telling genre that explores the beauty of reading this book at the same time across being unique, of escaping to an alternate two countries, and we are asking for your world, of staying true to oneself, of making help in your school. We are looking for as a stand and making decisions often against much support as possible to achieve this great odds. terrific goal and smash last year’s number 4. Positive Story Lines: of just over 1 million readers. This trends acts to counter some of the 5. Kid friendly non-fiction unkindness and stress that can be around These titles aim to place the reader in in our children’s lives. There is a lot of room a time, place or situation across various for love and empathy, for an emphasis on topics. They distill the huge amounts of sharing and inclusiveness, confidence and information young readers are faced with fun, in the world of children’s books as we into chunks so that they can understand move into 2019. complex topics and build their own 39 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

knowledge and curiosity about the world they live in. The emphasis is often on activity and self-help. 6. Strong female characters Expect more fiction titles that feature strong female protagonists that not only empower girls but also act as role models for both girls and boys. As an example of the trend Captain Marvel will be in cinemas in March 2019 alongside books that herald the first solo female Super- Hero lead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The Captain Marvel film and books promote themes of self- discovery, bravery and teamwork, and this is a long awaited and much hyped debut because of Captain Marvel’s rich, 40 year history in Marvel comics. Another example is the Girltopia series which is life-affirming fiction for upper primary girls with its deft blend of suspense, humour and action. In terms of picture books, Stacy Gregg has produced a delightful strong minded pony hero for young readers with Minny Whinny, Happy Birthday to Me. 7. Diversity Books that feature empathy, courage and resilience will grow in popularity and feature children of different backgrounds, religions, and ethnicity. As our society becomes more diverse it only makes sense that our children’s literature will be too. 8. Mysteries and Whodunits This trend took off in 2018 and is set to continue strongly. In fact 2019 is set to be an incredible year for this genre. We will be looking to see very funny, as well 40 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

as mysterious, spy whodunits that should Author keep our kids’ reading on the edge of their seats! Rhys Darby led the way at the end of 2018 with his wacky mystery spoof, The Top Secret Undercover Notes of Buttons McGinty. And Jack Heath is an absolute master of thrilling action packed whodunits. 9. Gaming Rob Southam has a wealth of experience Minecraft books sat on the New York in the literacy sector, both as a classroom Times bestseller lists in 2018 and the teacher and in her career with Scholastic books continue to attract great numbers New Zealand. Her work on literacy of readers. There is diversity across the and making reading a central part in whole Minecraft brand comprising children’s lives is acclaimed both locally fiction, diaries, mysteries and non- and internationally. She has presented at fiction. Redstone Junior High is a new International Conferences on the subject unofficial graphic novel for Minecrafters. of boys and literacy, and throughout New Fortnite players too can branch out into Zealand to educators and parents on ways a book environment and navigate their to increase every child’s potential as a reader. way around the island learning to secure Rob has achieved national tributes. their position and explore the main She is the 2014 winner of the prestigious hotspots in Secrets of the Island Storylines Betty Gilderdale Award for her outstanding contribution to children’s 10. E-Books literature. She holds a Citation of Merit We will see a more diverse offering in E from the New Zealand Literacy Association, Books, with a growing trend being the and although a non-Rotarian, she holds development of more augmented reality Rotary’s highest award, being named as a and interactive experience for readers, Paul Harris Fellow for her contribution to sitting them beautifully alongside literacy in New Zealand. Rob’s current role is as an Ambassador for traditional books. Scholastic New Zealand. And alongside all these exciting trends it seems fitting to end with a quote from "The ability to read, write, and communicate Timothy Rasinski, Professor of Literacy connects people to one another and empowers them Education at Kent State University. He to achieve things they never thought possible. states “Those who work to help children Communication and connection are the basis of who we are and how we live together and interact become fluent and joyful readers are, in with the world." my opinion, doing the same essential International Literacy Association work as medical doctors who help their patients breathe.” 41 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

MARGARET MAHY MEMORIAL LECTURE 2018 Narrative and nourisment: story and self Barbara Else

The inaugural Margaret Mahy Memorial lecture was established in 2014 to honour Margaret Mahy’s significant contribution to the world of literature for children and young adults. In 2018 acclaimed author Barbara Else delivered the lecture in Christchurch.

Margaret Mahy herself said many wise world, shaped differently from the actual words about literature for children. I hope world, for the purposes of what it needs my thoughts and anecdotes will add to an to say in its own voice. But how strange increasingly important issue, if only in the it is that there are similar stories in many questions I’ve gathered cultures, saying similar about reading and things to the different audience. audiences. Or is it? Some months ago I Even before it’s started thinking about born an infant is what the mother’s likely to recognise its voice might mean in mother’s voice. With terms of storytelling. I normal development scribbled on a post-it babies in utero hear note: the mother’s voice at about 18 week’s – the constant in a world gestation. At around 25 of increasing size and weeks they can react to surprises. I had no idea voices and sounds. Try where the words might going as I did, several lead. Then Rachel months pregnant, to King asked if I’d a thunderous stage present this lecture and performance of Jesus suggested: ‘something Christ Superstar. Even about Go Girl, gender pre-birth, babies will and imagination in storytelling.’ be in range of the everyday rhythms of ‘The mother’s voice’ had a group of conversation. There is a pattern to vocal companions. Off they set. With each new utterances, the soft or sharp, lazy or rapid, tale in Go Girl the writer’s challenge is to high and joyful, or deep and serious find a voice or way of telling that a reader moments of our days. Different voices agrees to connect with. The story needs to with their own rhythm and timbre could bring you into - a particular relationship, grow familiar. an isolated space of just you and the words. According to a note in Brian Boyd’s Even a realistic story creates its own new On the Origin of Stories, in controlled 42 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

conditions it was shown that even 45 other listeners react. Gossip makes us minutes after birth, newborns can try to imagine and be amazed. When it’s over we mimic expressions. (But not if it’s done come back to reality. But the boundaries by a robot!) Even at minutes old, they of knowledge have been prodded. We’ve showed they were social beings with a been made aware of possibilities. need to engage and respond. A few week’s old, most healthy babies make that very Brain Networks clear. Say a simple word – hello – see In 2015, Dr. John S. Hutton of Cincinnati a baby focus on your mouth. After a Children’s Hospital Medical Center moment they try to shape theirs to copy ran the first study to use a functional yours. Months later they’ll learn how to magnetic resonance imaging scan push air out at the same time to make the (FMRI) specifically to look at cognitive right sound! Talking! stimulation in the home and the brains The earliest stories a baby hears about of 4-year-old children. It was a small its own life go something like this: study that looked at how three kinds of storytelling activated four brain networks. “What’s the matter? Let’s pick you up. It involved audio books, animation, and You need a nappy-change. Off it comes – picture books. phewph! Let’s clean you up – and here’s a The four brain networks were: new nappy … nice and fresh. Now what • language shall we do?” • visual perception (the ability It’s a minimalist tale, only about function, to interpret the surrounding what’s going on at that moment. But environment by what you see) during it, something happens to the baby’s • and visual imagery (constructing benefit. There’s an opening situation. And mental images when learning new a development. Then a resolution that information in order to recall it better leads to – who knows what in the next later). chapter of the tiny life? Given narrative The fourth network, the ‘default mode’ about what they’re doing in the present, was the most important. babies start to understand language. That This is internal reflection or how early social experience engages the brain something matters to you. on several levels. With audio books, the language network Adults are not always aware of was activated but overall there was less toddlers and young children listening connectivity between the networks. and observing. Conversation. And gossip: Children were struggling to understand. ‘someone’ did ‘what?’ Gossip takes the With animation, there was a lot of activity everyday to another level. It’s about action in audio and visual perception but again or behaviour we may not have expected. not much connectivity between all four It puts us in touch with the unusual, the brain networks. Hutton interpreted this outer world. Even though some gossip as the animation doing all the work for may well be ‘fake news’ the listening child the child. The child’s comprehension of learns how to gauge those stories by how the story was worst. 43 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

With illustrated picture books there was own or widen my mental horizons. Almost increased activity between and among all certainly, this is tied into my awareness 4 networks: language, visual perception, from early days when my parents read imagery, and the default mode. Words me A. A. Milne’s poems. In a way that and pictures together bring images to life enchanted children, Milne wrote about inside the mind. The results in Hutton’s the everyday – twined together with the experiment weren’t as good overall as scores impossible. achieved for pre-schoolers when they were The king pathetically says: ‘I only want read to on a parent’s lap. I wonder – the a little bit of butter for my bread.’ rumble of voice, being so close to the The wise little boy warns his mother: parent or care-giver, could be an echo of ‘You must never go down to the end of the pre-birth and new-born experience. town unless you go down with me.’ Hutton’s experiment suggests a great It taught me to carry stories and deal about the need for community, in possibilities in my mind. terms of story-telling to children. The right social setting and the right presentation Rebel Girls help us best engage our brains early, in the In March last default mode that he called ‘the seat of the year I confronted soul – internal reflection, how something a huge gap in matters to you.’ my childhood I heard of a foster mother caring for a reading life. Let 12 year old girl who had trouble reading. me explain. That The foster mother persevered with books month, I had – but with no sign of success. Then one an email from day, the girl glanced up from a book with a Penguin Random look of awe. ‘When I read,’ she said, ‘I get House NZ. The pictures in my mind. Does that happen to children’s publisher told me about the you?’ overseas success of Goodnight Stories for That story gives me chills. Until that Rebel Girls. moment the child had been deprived of The authors ‘in a fairy-tale manner’ the experience of the power of reading. told the true life stories of 100 women, But it wasn’t too late. How wonderful historical and contemporary, from all that mother was – kind enough, strong around the world, any race or culture, who enough, aware enough, to persevere. had succeeded in discoveries, adventures, Reluctant readers are possibly less skilled and professions. PRH been brewing ideas at processing language, at forming mental for a local version, up to 50 women. The pictures, or reflecting on what they aim: to encourage girls from age 7 to 17 read. But the connectivity that develops to widen their aspirations about careers imagination can be activated, even if it’s and professions. Would I be interested in later than usual. coming on board as the writer? I’ve always needed to read fiction, to be The writing style was to be a blend engaged in lives and deeds that echo my of non-fiction and fiction and they 44 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

wanted the stories told in ‘an engaging In fact, at age 8, I tried to write, direct and descriptive way’. There was a list of and star in my own Joan of Arc play. It possible people to include already, but never came to performance. At the one they wanted their writer to have input and only rehearsal in the school hall, I into who she thought would be worthy to leaned on a vaulting horse, and cried: be included. Then came : ‘The catch is that ‘Men! Come to my aid!’ The French and our deadline for the text is mid-July.’ English armies, 8 year old boys, ignored Many thoughts beset me, under a surge me completely and kept roaring after each of rage and despair that such a book wasn’t other with imaginary swords. It probably available when I was a girl. What could I offered me early significant insight into have done sooner and better if it had been? different needs of story depending on Fright, not knowing if I could do the kind gender – and I have questions about that of research necessary – I write fiction, not later. non-fiction. Certainty that I could do the What was happening in the world ‘fairy-tale manner.’ Completely blank as to outside, then and earlier? Only recently what they really meant by ‘engaging and are we hearing some of it. In the First and descriptive.’ Deep certainty that if I said Second World Wars women had helped ‘no’, when the local version was published hold domestic life together, in the home with another writer’s name, I’d be a jealous as ever, but also in jobs that had been mess. But the deadline was crushing. Give done by men. Wars over, men returned, 3 weeks for a contract to be signed, and wanted their jobs again, and fair enough. it would leave only 14 weeks to research, But women seemed quietly pushed back write and revise all the profiles. ‘Engaging behind their front doors. Or they were and descriptive’ profiles. Of women not yet doing highly-valuable work behind other even selected. doors. I was never going to say no. Because: Two examples: In 1935 in the States, women’s stories. Local. It is so important the precursor to NASA hired 5 women to hear our own stories. Stories about to be their first computer pool at Langley what is possible. At primary school I campus. The NASA historian says: "The loved true stories. When Mr Arnott women were meticulous and accurate... said, ‘Silent reading time,’ I’d almost and they didn't have to be paid very teleport to the class library shelf and grab much." a history book: tales of Horatio holding In the early 80s I heard from my the bridge, Charlemagne, Sir Francis physician-researcher husband who seemed Drake exploring. Token females were to think it unremarkable, that Nobel Prize Florence Nightingale and Mme Curie. I winners, Crick, Watson and Wilkin’s never wanted to emulate them – I’d have discoveries about DNA were not theirs been a terrible nurse, even worse as a alone. There had been a woman, Rosalind scientist. Otherwise it was lots of blokes, Franklin, whose work had never been conventionally-heroic. adequately honoured. Oh, there was Joan of Arc but who More and more, such stories have would want to emulate her? become an avalanche. Recently I read 45 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

th about a 19 C Scottish portrait painter, thought it would never earn much whose ground-breaking work the Royal money. She had better make a living Academy refused to exhibit, simply at something else. First she tried because she was female. Stories about nursing. She tried hard. But it didn’t women, overlooked, even deliberately suit. hidden. Why was the world like that? So she went to university while she Staring at that email last year, I felt thought about what next, and loved it was decades, centuries beyond time, to learning about philosophy and folk address and redress the lack of women’s tales. At last Margaret decided the stories. To fill that gap. As I began work best thing would be a job with books. on Go Girl a joyful global tsunami of She became a librarian. Margaret books like Rebel Girls was already rising. saw everything as an adventure. For Great Women Who Changed the World. example she said that librarians dance Women in Science. The marvellously titled on a ridge – on one side there is order, She Persisted. I discovered how hard our on the other lies chaos. She never own women persisted, struggling to – married but had two little girls. After follow their dreams? One such woman a busy day at the library, she’d race was Margaret Mahy. home to cook for her daughters. She Here is one of the stories from Go fed the dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rabbits, Girl: birds and whatever else was around "Margaret Mahy. 1936 – 2012 at the time. Then she tucked her girls Once upon a time a baby with into bed. mysterious powers was born in Finally she could rush to her Whakatane. Her name was Margaret. desk. There till late at night Margaret It was some years before her powers wove her word-enchantments. An were revealed – she could write stories American publisher saw some of that carried readers to fantastical Margaret’s stories from the School worlds. When she was little Margaret Journal. Like a fairy godmother wanted stories to be true so badly with money rather than magic, the she tried to convince other children publisher flew to New Zealand to she spoke the languages of animals. examine everything Margaret had Though she wanted to be a writer, she written. ‘The Lion in the Meadow! 46 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

And this one, and these, must be march and dance and struggle over the published as books,’ she declared. pages. Some could be more imaginative, Margaret’s early picture books perhaps focussed on a single incident, like made her famous almost at once. the Jean Batten tale. Or with a refrain – Her first two novels each won the Lisa Tamati, ultra-marathon runner with, Carnegie Medal. But it was still a ‘oh really?’ Or with an image to focus the while before Margaret could afford life, as I came upon with the story hardest to spend all her time writing tales of to write, Helen Clark’s. I finally read that adventure and fun for children from when she became a Minister, a cheap old toddlers to teenagers. She won prize briefcase had been left behind in her new after prize all over the world. The list office. Rather than buy a fancy new one, is so long it would never fit on a page she insisted she’d use this second-hand unless the print was so small that even one – it was just right for the job. And so a mouse would have to squint. was that image, right for my job. The great NZ writer whose work When I’d said ‘yes’ to writing Go Girl, is honoured in the title of this lecture, my next thought was, ‘there must be achieved remarkable success. But diversity.’ Racially, culturally, of course. her journey seems less like following But I wanted any reader who opened dreams and more like labouring uphill the book to find someone like them. I for years on a dark night with a load wanted the shy girl. The girl who rushes that hardly lightened”. at everything and finally finds something to focus on. The girl whose family didn’t Go Girl expect her to amount to much. The girl Writing Go Girl was like being a stage who could never be bothered with fuss. manager – figuring out when, with each The girl who was the first in all her story, to open the curtain to show the family to go to university. The girl who reader how a particular woman managed managed to rise out of tragedy. I’ve to break barriers. How she coped with always maintained that no subject matter failure, how she persisted. None of the is too awful for children. What matters women showed stereotypical female is the way the author treats it. I had to ways of behaving. They had individual write about the NZ Land Wars, Ahumai approaches, motivation and personalities. te Paerata, Maori warrior – and not upset The word limit for each was 350 words 7 year olds, the lower range of the book’s (1 A4 page). With some, like Margaret’s, readership. I had to write about Beatrice I wrote very condensed biographies. Tinsley’s terrible choice between family But a storybook needs variety, a mix and career. And Sophie Pascoe’s accident. of approaches to give the book quiet Researching for Go Girl, I saw an moments, exciting moments. overview of NZ history, at least from Every story needed its own voice, the Land Wars to the present. I saw the one that spoke of the ‘character’ of the generosity and compassion of women: woman. I wanted a range of modes of Dr Margaret Cruikshank, first woman telling to reflect the range of women who GP; Dame Mira Szaszy with the Maori 47 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

Women’s Welfare League; Dame Whina Gender and Imagination in Cooper; Beatrice Faumuina moving from story her success in sport to set up ways to help When girls and boys are between say, 5 younger Pasifika women and men; and and 9 years old, they often ask, ‘tell me way back – Elizabeth McCombs, first about when I was little.’ If you oblige, woman MP in Christchurch. Most dear their faces show a mix of pleasure and to me became Rita Angus, who refused equally-delicious embarrassment. Because to go overseas because, ‘it is important for hearing their own stories helps them place me to be a woman artist in this country.’ themselves, ground themselves, it gives When news broke about Go Girl’s them context, helps their sense of self. coming publication, I read on social Naturally we media: ‘Do we really need a local version need stories of Rebel Girls?’ Yes. Our New Zealand for boys too. stories. About our women. Booksellers Stories that have told the publisher and myself about, show the for instance, seeing Asian NZ girls, off- range of male handedly flicking through the book, endeavour. stop – at a face like theirs. Pasifika girls, I’m not sur- suddenly frozen at a page with – a face prised that like theirs. I’ve heard of sports-mad girls this year racing through the sports-women stories Quercus, first then devouring all the other profiles. UK, brought I’ve heard of mothers carrying the book out Stories for Boys Who Dare to be Different. And NZ’s to the bookshop counter saying: ‘I have to Oh Boy! will be out soon. But on social buy this for my daughter.’ And daughters media and in person I’ve heard some anger saying: ‘it’s for my mother.’ that boy’s stories along the lines of Rebel At an event at the Hutton Theatre Girls and Go Girl are being published now. in Dunedin with one of the illustrators, The argument is: ‘It’s too early, it isn’t fair. Phoebe Morris and one of the profiled Give women more time in the spotlight.’ women, orca specialist Ingrid Visser, I partly agree. But more strongly, I feel I saw girls marching in, copies of Go our boys can’t be blamed for the attitudes Girl clutched like warrior breastplates. of the past. They need to see a range of Overwhelmingly, I saw those girls approaches to life, to success. Don’t punish engaged by the reality of a book full of our them by depriving them of a balance. own stories that they felt related to them Rigid ideas about how men or women directly. Stories that say, in that quiet ought to behave are no help to us. These space that’s just you and the page, ‘If you books show that the evil twins, toxic choose, you can do this too.’ I’ve heard of masculinity, a syndrome that promotes a boy who took Go Girl to school and told violence, and its sister, toxic helpless his class: ‘This book is for any child who’s passive femininity, don’t have to reign over been told they can’t do something.’ us. But… do boys need different types of 48 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

story, told in a different way to the way what most NZ authors I’d read actually girls’ stories need to be told? There is a did – write about men. Once I realised lot to consider, trying to figure out what’s – with a bit of a shock – I wrote short going on. stories with women protagonists. This was In March this year, a local website for after my little family’s return from 3 years children’s literature, The Sapling, published in California, when I met Fiona Kidman a piece by Elizabeth Heritage on ‘Gender who gave me important encouragement. (im)balance in NZ children’s books.’ www. It seemed while I’d been away women thesapling.co.nz authors here had sprung up in a somewhat She found fewer female protagonists bleak landscape to add colour and wit. in books for children. And she pointed (They have kept on springing!) to studies that said the dearth of My adult novels so far have women female characters gives boys a sense of protagonists. The first was even called The entitlement and lowers girls’ self-esteem Warrior Queen. (I should say: the draft title and occupational aspirations. As I said, was ‘The Parrot’s Version’ – I was telling a lot to consider … One question is: are the woman’s side of the marriage train- parents, teachers, librarians and publishers wreck. Her spouse would have had an unconsciously (or consciously) doing entirely different view of it. Ex-spouses something that turns boys away from invariably do, and he was definitely going female protagonists? Because received to be an ex-spouse.) wisdom says boys don’t read books with girls as leads. The Travelling Restaurant Yet in a discussion on the NZ library When I began list-serve, most of the participants writing the disputed this. A male librarian at an all- first of my boys school said that especially in fantasy fantasy books and science fiction, boys didn’t care who for children, the main character was as long as it was The Travelling ‘a good story.’ Kyle Mewburn told me her Restaurant, I books with male protagonists tend to sell deliberately better. Stacy Gregg’s publisher packages chose a boy her novels about girls and horses, Barbie- protagonist. like, in pastel colours. Of course very few There are active boys would pick them up, and plenty of female characters girls wouldn’t either. A school librarian in key roles. But I wanted to show a boy challenged boys to ignore the latest cover. succeeding not by using force, but by using They did, and were so impressed they his wits and caring for others. I had no asked for more Stacy Gregg books. real expectation the book would ever be I checked my own writing for bias. published. But here’s another anecdote. When I began writing it was short stories, On a Children’s Book Award tour for The all but one with male protagonists. I Travelling Restaurant, my first talk was suppose I’d been unconsciously copying in a primary school library. I began my 49 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

spiel … ‘Jasper isn’t very good-looking, encouraged? I don’t know. I just have two his parents don’t seem to think he’s very remarkable examples that illustrate each bright…’ Yikes, I thought, this won’t grab end of the silken ribbon of reading and them. I glanced up. Even the handsome, story, and what children get from it. highly-able-looking boys were sitting up In a piece called ‘Tales from Grimm’ wide-eyed. But at the end of my talk, a published in 1975 Janet Frame describes lot of the girls stayed to ask questions and herself at 7 years old. Her new friend the boys vanished. Oh well … A librarian Poppy picked a book out of a pile of coal rushed after them and came back with a sacks, shook off some slaters and gave grin. They’d all lined up at the reserves it to her. It was Grimm’s Fairy Tales. All desk. The following year the principal those stories, together! No pictures! A told me: ‘You might not be especially real book! Janet describes how much the pleased to hear this but The Travelling stories meant to her, the plunge into each Restaurant is our most-stolen library first sentence, the terror of realising she book.’ It intrigued me that a story about a was half-way through a tale, unable to go vulnerable male had hit a spot. back, she had to go on … Poppy taught her bad language too, and Janet’s parents Story and Voice made her return the book. But Janet said Story and voice: in a piece of writing, the stories themselves were not returned. voice is tone and register. The writer’s The magic of them stayed inside her. choices in this regard help to carry and Now to Frederick Douglass, an give shape to the subject matter. If we American social reformer, abolitionist, don’t trust the voice or find it relevant, writer, statesman. He was born in 1818, a we don’t buy into the story. One of the slave, and of course treated like property. key aspects to any successful story for When he was 12, Sophia Auld, wife of his children is that it gives agency to the then owner, taught Frederick the alphabet. child, or child-like figure at its centre. When Hugh Auld heard, he refused to It authenticates the experience of being let the boy have any more lessons. Young a child. It gives a voice to children and Frederick realised: “Knowledge unfits a speaks to them. child to be a slave”. He taught himself I don’t want to read about shoot-’em up to read because knowledge is power. heroes or sports warriors, male or female. Reading – the ability to read – is certainly Nor do many boys. They like novels with power. It’s a theme in my next children’s plots that have puzzles to solve, or barrels novel, in fact. I had trouble bringing that of humour, or both. After they’re 8 or manuscript to a state where settings, so, boys tend to prefer non-fiction. But characters and action came together. I put many simply want to play ‘Fortnite’ or be it aside to write Go Girl. outside making their own stories in their I went back into the novel. I found exploits on the playground and sports that having faced the dark material field, rather than reading which seems in Go Girl’s real life stories helped me passive. Does it matter if they don’t read, confront the material in the novel – a boy either fiction or non-fiction? Can they be on the cusp of becoming a man, gaining 50 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

independence from the toxic neediness of course, it’s not that easy. Some children his mother. I’d better add here that she just don’t turn to reading for strength or isn’t entirely human. replenishment. It’s worth noting here: Back to voice, to tone and register. The generally men don’t read as much as first voice is the mother’s voice – and boys women. Recent NZ Book Council figures are meant to separate themselves from the prove that. mother. There are as many ways of doing Another anecdote, about reading that as there are boys. Girls too are meant tastes. Duffy Books, as most of you will to separate themselves from dependency, know, give free books to primary schools. to self-determine. And we’re far more A publishing friend of mine helped aware these days of children figuring out box up some Duffy books and heard their gender. What about the range of all this: it wasn’t much use sending fiction of them, the voices and stories they need to the very low decile schools, in that to hear? The thing is, stories for children particular area at any rate. The children should give voice to their concerns. read virtually no fiction. But they would Children in all their diversity, at all their grab non-fiction. I thought, maybe they stages, need and deserve that. need affirmation about the real world, Publishers say they want to publish their place in it, before their imaginations books about diversity. Whether they do can begin to explore possibility. So, again, or not is a matter of financial risk. For local true stories have a role in giving instance, in this tiny local market, it would context to the lives of our young people. be hard to sell enough picture books about Some of you will know of David Riley, gender diversity to break even. It needs ‘Reading Warrior’ – a local educator who brave publishers to give an outlet to diverse saw Pasifika boys struggle with reading. voices. To give variety to what’s offered on He began writing his own books just for the literary table. If a child doesn’t read at those boys, and now works with literacy all, it is worrying. But if you or I don’t buy and reading recovery. I saw him one-on- into a particular writing style, or subject one with two very different boys about 10 matter, why should we read it? years old, each shivering with despair that If a child does read, but it’s nothing they couldn’t read. David talked to them but comics, like insisting on a diet of softly, with utter concentration. In turn mental canned spaghetti, I don’t think each boy smiled through tears and left, grown-ups need worry too much. head up, shoulders back. Yes, they were Learning to relish reading can be like going to do it. David’s books, true stories learning to appreciate broccoli. At some about sports people, do the trick. He says, point, the taste buds develop and a yukky if boys are interested in the subject matter vegetable might transform into an item they don’t know they’re reading. of delight. Just keep putting it on or near The best story for each child is whatever the child’s plate. And for goodness sake, if challenges and affirms that child’s inner you want them to eat it let them see you self and coaxes it into the wider world. eating it. Or reading, reading something, ‘The home run book’ is a term snaffled and getting something out of it. Of from American baseball. It’s the book that 51 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

gives one positive reading experience that by Philip Pullman, many others. Those can make a child a committed reader. It books can be read and understood by 12 takes a piece of luck, a dedicated teacher, year olds and younger. But emotionally or an inspired librarian to find the right and psychologically, those abrasive, story. School librarians work like secret sometimes depressing books are not fairy godparents, finding the right gift for designed for younger children. They the right child. were wrong for the girl, even damaging. As well as any gender tendencies She stopped reading. The mother began around reading, of course you see different reading aloud with her girl, a mid-grade needs and responses in all the age groups: fantasy series with voyage and return, pre-school, primary, intermediate and about families reuniting. Now the girl young adult. Lewis Carroll, first to write was reading for herself again. There’s a directly for children, gave us Alice, who reason for middle-grade fiction, written visited Wonderland then went through especially for that age group. the Looking Glass. His child characters YA books are for teenagers learning questioned the adult world and the what it’s like to move into the adult madness of grown-ups. That’s exactly what world and take those responsibilities children up to about twelve ought to do, for themselves. Book covers, if they while they observe the adult world and don’t actively encourage a range of figure out how it operates. gender to turn to the first page, at least I believe that up to early adolescence, shouldn’t subliminally discourage any children prefer the voyage and return group. Teenage issues are teenage issues story pattern. They need the glow of wherever, however, whoever. Certainly, hope, to know that safety is there in the reading can open doors on tragedy. I saw end. I wonder if hope fosters imagination my younger daughter, about 14 at the which in turn can foster hope. Those time, awash with tears. I stopped dead more adult books that a and asked what the matter was. She held child can read might not up a copy of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men be big on hope. – she was at the last pages. I crept away You hear from to let the experience flow, and we talked proud parents that about it later. a child has an adult Even younger children need sad reading age. That’s and scary reading experiences, in safe good. But there’s surroundings. To worry that Cruella reading burn-out. de Ville will have her gorgeous black- A mother told me and-white spotted coat, soft as the pelts her 12 year old girl had of 99 Dalmatian puppies. They need been an avid reader, to read how Pongo and Missus, mum forging through all the and dad Dalmatian work hard to save series her friends were their own puppies and every last other into, The Hunger Games, one! By contrast: children need to fall His Dark Materials about laughing at Terry and Andy on 52 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

the umpteenth floor of their treehouse. In fairy tales from all around the world Those characters have amazing ideas, there are key differences between girl and try to put them into practice, and deal boy main characters. There is of course with the consequences. The voice of the typical character of the third son, and the stories is anarchic and authentic – of Jack, the ‘every-boy’ who wins through and the books are largely pictorial. But by showing empathy, using wit as much – or and – those stories give the child as strength. There are similar tales about characters agency and the third sister. There are also Cinderella say it’s ok to be a kid. tales. There is Bluebeard’s wife, and Little Our boys and girls Red Riding Hood. Tales in which a girl need to read local or young woman defends herself against authors, like Des Hunt, oppression by male figures and sometimes about good warriors, by other women (like ugly sisters). eco-warriors, set in The original wise old women our context, the NZ storytellers, the ‘gossips’, couched social landscape. They need problems of women in ways which other to read Fleur Beale’s women could understand. books – an all-boys Everyday problems, everyday stories, school loved I am Not moving to imagination-stretching marvels Esther - used it for years. that work the muscles in the mind and that And her Speed Freak deep network. Children need it all, don’t is a strong story about they? Now more than ever? I have seen male role models. A reluctant boy myself the lack of language stimulation reader might not even know he’s reading. I through conversation and story and reading also believe children need to read fantasy. aloud deprive the children of a well-off, Though it’s not set in the real world, it is intelligent family. The most awful modern still about real-life emotions, family and curse must be that your parents may be relationship difficulties. When moral and addicts to their smart-phones and never ethical problems are at that other-world encourage you to have a vocabulary. A recent distance, they might even seem clearer to article in the Guardian said: 28% of 4 and a child reader. 5 year olds in the UK cannot communicate Very few stories suitable for children in full sentences. It’s enough to make were written at all before the development writers wonder why of the fairy tale, in the late C17th – when they keep going. So the traditional spoken tales began to be many questions. written down by many authors. The best- known is Charles Perrault with Contes de Ma Mere. But he was outnumbered and even preceded by several women, like Marie-Catherine, Baroness d’Aulnoy. (So why should Perrault be the best known? – just asking.) 53 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

Not enough answers. I’ve always written Storytelling continues that process. for children and adults. Now and then Writing is alchemy. Any author creates a I’m told ‘that’s unusual’ (I don’t think voice – the reader hears, sees and feels. it is) or asked ‘what’s the difference?’ I Writing for children is a double sometimes sense the speaker feels I go journey. down-market writing for children, as if it’s It hopes to create a voice that can be somehow shameful. So far I’ve bitten back trusted. amusement. Though it can feel as if I’ve At the same time, for the writer it been brushed by an invisible electric fence. can be a way of trying again to find the The simple answer is, there’s no difference. enchanted inner world of being new to Each story that wants to be written just story, to the first discovery of the deep asks for its particular audience. But writing level. That challenging space. for children can be more playful. There are fewer restraints on subject matter, on Author imagination. There are more restraints in the way of responsibility to your audience. You write for children but you are an adult. You have to exercise more judgment on what you write and why, because the audience doesn’t have as much reading experience, as much life experience. You cannot tell them what to think. You cannot preach. You cannot fudge. You must be aware of your audience in a way that you just don’t Barbara Else writes for children and adults when you write for adults. I’d say writers and is co-director of the TFS Manuscript for children are very aware of the market, Assessment Service. Her awards include and ask themselves: ‘will boys read this, are an MNZM for Services to Literature, the female characters active enough?’ But I and the Margaret Mahy Medal. She has quote the Otago University Arts Fellows held the Victoria University Writing web-page. The question for all creative Fellowship and the University of Otago work – music, dance, art, and writing for College of Education/Creative New adults and children is: will it ‘challenge, Zealand Children’s Writing Fellowship. provoke and reassure, and tell us who we Her latest book is Go Girl – a storybook of are?’ All those things that the mother’s epic NZ women. Due out in April is another voice originally does, or ought to do. children’s novel, Harsu and the Werestoat.

“When reading, we don't fall in love with the characters' appearance. We fall in love with their words, their thoughts, and their hearts. We fall in love with their souls.” Anonymous

54 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019 Ramping up reading for pleasure Debbie Roxburgh

What exactly is reading for pleasure? It they enjoyed reading for pleasure (58.3%). is the reading that we do of our own free Responses to the survey indicated that will, for the sheer joy that we get from the children who enjoyed reading were four act of reading. This is reading for reading’s times more likely to agree that reading is sake; reading without the imperative of an cool, they get excited when they read and assessment, a book review, or a report. I’m that reading helps them better understand talking about reading to escape, meet new about the world. people, and explore new places, different Well-known in the area of reading times and areas of interest. Stephen and well-being is Nicola Morgan, an Krashen (2004) describes this as free internationally-acclaimed author and voluntary reading (FVR). authority on teenage wellbeing, how stress There is now a substantial body impacts performance, effects of screens, of evidence about the extraordinary social media and reading for pleasure. transformative effect of reading for Nicola has coined the term ‘readaxation’ to pleasure. Research points not only to describe reading for pleasure as a deliberate gains in cognitive development, academic strategy to reduce stress levels. Schools achievement and better employment have adopted this idea with one school prospects, but also to the poverty- turning its library into a holiday-themed busting effect for those in disadvantaged “Readaxation Resort” for International circumstances. There is also a growing Bookweek. Students responded positively awareness of the power of reading for to this commenting that the changes made pleasure in building social and emotional them want to visit the library more often. skills, and enhancing our general health “Others schools have encouraged students and well-being. The resulting increase in to use Nicola’s readaxation diary to see social capital for children, young people whether reading an enjoyable book is a and adults builds a stronger network useful way to reduce stress. Using the diary of relationships allowing our society to students record their stress levels/feelings function effectively. before and after reading for about half In its annual literacy survey of over an hour a day for seven days, then decide 42,000 children in November/December whether reading is a useful stress-busting 2016 the National Literacy Trust found activity for them. that children who read for pleasure are more likely to read for interest and achievement Know yourself as a reader than because others had told them to As readers, we all have reading preferences. read. Interestingly in this survey socio- An important stage of developing as economic background made no difference a reader is building an awareness of what to the number of children who said that you like to read, and when, and why you 55 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

like to read. Adults can generally answer and non-fiction provides fuel for these these questions about themselves, so reading conversations with students, sets the challenge becomes how to support a powerful example and fuels enthusiasm. students as they develop awareness of Reading for pleasure is strongly themselves as readers. Steven Layne influenced by relationships between (2009) suggests “igniting a passion by teachers and children, and children knowing your students”. He recommends and families. In 2016, Coastal Taranaki using an inventory where students record School initiated a project of recording their attitudes to reading, the sorts of teachers talking about themselves as books they like to read and the topics that readers including sharing a favourite they would like to learn more about – the book, or one that had special meaning scope and style of questions are adjusted for them. These short videos were first to suit different ages of students and may played at whole-school assemblies and range from circling topics that interest then posted on the school library website. you on a printed list, to answering the Following the introduction of these question “If an author could write a book videos there was a significant increase in just for you, what would it be about?”. The conversations about books and reading information provided by each student between staff and students, along with then guides reading conversations and increased demand for the titles that had book recommendations. been promoted. Teachers and librarians could fill out the same inventory about their reading Choosing what to read preferences, or perhaps answer these In the Kids and family reading report an sorts of questions to reveal their reading overwhelming majority of children (ages personality e.g. where and when do you 6-17) agree that their favourite books, do most of your reading for pleasure? and the ones that they are most likely What books do you re-read? How would to finish, are the ones that they choose you describe your reading style? (Read themselves. Nearly three-quarters of the every page or a skipper?). Imagine if same children say that they would read you shared this information about your more if they could find books that they ‘reading self ’ with students and they in like. turn shared with you. What might be Successfully browsing, previewing the outcome? and selecting is a critical first step Reading role models and towards reading engagement, and choosing 'the right book' to borrow can reading conversations be a challenging first hurdle to overcome. To be reading role models (able to share Think about your favourite book store what you have read, and talk about what and how satisfying it is to go straight to you plan to read next) it’s important the section that appeals to you, confident that teachers continually add to their that there will be something there to knowledge of children’s and young adult pique your interest. Consider following literature. Reading widely in both fiction this model, arranging your library 56 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

collection by genre so that students can cover or best blurb or best start (first quickly and independently find a book page). that interests them. 4. After 5 minutes each group moves to Arranging books by genre provides a different table to repeat the process a scaffold, or short cut, in the selection using a different selection of books process. It doesn't result in students 5. As students become more skilful limiting themselves to reading within with this process, reduce the time at a genre, as establishing real reading each changeover. Result - students preferences will come from wide reading are introduced to a wide range of experience. previously unfamiliar books. Teachers Vital in the process of supporting who used this activity reported that students as they choose what to read is students enthusiastically read a wider ensuring that they have access to a diverse range of books. collection of books where they recognise themselves and their life experiences, see Genre based book clubs people who are different in time, place and As a change from the usual style of book experience, and build an understanding of club that meets regularly through the year, themselves and their world. try running one-off events that are based What else can libraries do to support around a particular book. These events children as they choose what to read? Offer may involve some pre-event activity or support and guidance as children browse reading, and could feature multiple activity the collection or “shop” for books to read stations (including discussion) around the next, discuss books and recommend titles library. A recently published graphic novel e.g. if you enjoyed Diary of a Wimpy Kid or book with a recently released movie by Jeff Kinney then try…, and institute adaptation could be a good one to try. generous loan limits that allow children Lucky-dip reading to borrow a variety and quantity of books. Readers are more likely to take a risk and A great cure for regimented reading try something new if they are allowed to habits is to choose a book you know borrow a generous number of books. nothing about. But how to make that appealing? Try wrapping some under- Five strategies to try used or undiscovered titles in plain paper Work in teams to discover new or newsprint and encourage students to pick from your “lucky-dip”. Some schools titles or genres. add a label showing the first line of text to 1. Select a range of different genres to the wrapping, or include a tip e.g. “turn to introduce to your class. page 37”. 2. Arrange approximately 4 books per category on tables (1 category per Crowd-sourcing table). This most often means taking a task 3. Working in teams, students decide that is performed by an employee and which of the 4 books has the best outsourcing it to a group or community. 57 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

In reading for pleasure terms this could be: Reading engagement ‘top-ups’ peer-to-peer recommendations and book- Every school can also request a reading talking where students promote books they engagement ‘top-up’ with their whole- have enjoyed and advise each other on what school loan. This is a selection of up to 75 to read next. These recommendations could great books matching your school profile, also feed into the selection of books for the and is in addition to your whole-school class or school library. Some schools have resource loan allocation. extended the crowd-sourcing concept to Anytime title requests class libraries by encouraging students to contribute outgrown books from home – Schools use our anytime title requests with parents’ permission! to order specific books from our schools’ lending collections. These may be books to Collaborations support individual students’ specific reading In addition to working with your school needs or interests. There is no limit to the librarian, develop a relationship with your number of anytime title requests a school local children’s librarian and invite them can make. to visit your class to share their reading Making the most of these recommendations. Children’s librarians are extra resources strong reading role models for students and visits are opportunities for positive reading Test driving new authors/genres conversations with someone from outside the school community. Visits will also help Requesting authors or genres that are unfamiliar to students creates an students grow their network of reading opportunity to promote different styles of influencers. writing, or introduce a class to previously Services to Schools supporting undiscovered authors. Providing access to reading for pleasure diverse collections of resources encourages students develop their ‘literary palates’ https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/lending- without putting extra strain on the library service or class budget. One of National Library’s Services to Schools strategic priorities is reading Support classroom programmes engagement. Our whole-school and Request additional resources for a class anytime title loans provide resources to e.g. a class working on developing their encourage and develop a love of reading, procedural writing skills could use a and to support students with inquiry. selection of craft, cookery, and construction Whole-school resource loans books for inspiration and examples. These contain resources to support the Extend or support target groups development of inquiry skills and reading of readers for pleasure. Schools order these loans once Use one of the topics in a whole-school a term. loan to provide books that offer extra 58 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

support and practice to identified groups engagement/libraries-supporting-readers of readers e.g. those who are transitioning National Literacy Trust. (n.d.) Celebrating from picture books to early chapter books; Reading for Enjoyment: Findings from or provide extra reading for an extension Our Annual Literacy Survey 2016 Report. Retrieved from group using the anytime title requests. https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/ Reading for pleasure loans to research-reports/celebrating-reading- teachers over summer enjoyment-findings-our-annual-literacy- survey-2016-report/ Request books that teachers can read The Reading Agency. (n.d.). Literature to expand their knowledge of children’s review: the impact of reading for pleasure and young adult literature. Act on their and empowerment. Retrieved from recommendations of favourite titles, and https://www.readingagency.org.uk/ add these to your school library collection. resources/2277/ Enrich the school library Author collection Borrow thematic collections that increase the range of books available for students. Use these extra resources as the basis for displays, for genre based book clubs or to provoke discussion and further investigation. References Education, D. F. (2012, May 14). Research evidence on reading for pleasure. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/ Debbie Roxburgh is part of the National publications/research-evidence-on- Library of New Zealand, Services to reading-for-pleasure Schools team of facilitators, providing Kids and Family Reading Report. (n.d.). professional learning and development, Retrieved from http://www.scholastic. com/readingreport/ information and advice to schools in Krashen, S. D. (2004). The power of reading the lower central North Island. Her role insights from the research. Westport, CT: includes facilitating connections between Libraries Unlimited. school communities as well as the wider Layne, S. L. (2012). Igniting a passion for educational community to support reading reading: Successful strategies for building engagement, digital literacy and innovative lifetime readers. New York: Scholastic. library learning environments. Debbie Morgan, Nicola. (2017, Dec 17) Listing is passionate about helping all students the Benefits of Reading. Retrieved from discover the joys and rewards of reading www.nicolamorgan.com/the-reading- brain/6991/ for pleasure and life-long learning; and the National Library of New Zealand. (n.d.). role of libraries, especially school libraries, Libraries supporting readers. Retrieved from in helping this happen. https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/reading- 59 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION Literacy Landscapes - National 41st Conference Report Sarah McCord

For three days during a mild and make the experience a pleasure for all calm spell in October, Palmerston who attended. North hosted over 220 delegates, Local councils around the country presenters and exhibitors for the 41st host a national conference on behalf of National Literacy Conference. I was the New Zealand Literacy Association privileged to work with a roopu (team) each year. Every conference is a little of dedicated educators alongside our different and every conference is a conference organiser for over two years place for educators to connect, learn as we planned this conference for our and grow professionally. We are very colleagues in education. Many on our grateful for the ongoing support of roopu were part of the 2004 Manawatu delegates, sponsors and exhibitors at conference committee, such is the each conference. dedication to literacy in the Manawatu On the 3rd to the 5th of October and the bond we all have. We had a 2018 we joined together at the Awapuni lot of fun planning every little detail to Function Centre where we were treated

Our conference committe 60 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019

to a feast of learning, fun and wonderful of literacy development. Then Dr food! Each day we were enriched by Bernadette Dwyer challenged us with passionate and inspiring workshop the need to be proactive with mirroring presenters and keynote speakers. We students' experiences in today’s digital were overwhelmed by the number of world if we want to reach and connect people who applied to take workshops, with them. We ended day one with a light hearted presentation from local entrepreneur, Suzie Johnston. Suzie had us in fits of laughter! Then we held the first ever teachers’ Lit Quiz hosted by the Kids’ Lit Quiz Master himself, Wayne Mills. More hilarity as teams competed against each other. Day two was underway with Professor Janet Gaffney’s moving presentation that made us dig deep and reflect on our practice as teachers and ask ourselves if our approach is the right one for each learner. Following this Rob Southam delighted us with an appraisal of newly published books that are inspiring young readers. Rob also took us down memory lane as she shared some of our old favourites. The afternoon was all about authors! We were fortunate to be joined by a group of outstanding Rita Palmer, conference M.C. New Zealand authors for our author symposiums: Gavin Bishop, Des Hunt, and the quality of each session was Sally Sutton, David Hill, Kate De Goldi outstanding. Ngā mihi nui, thank you and David Riley treated delegates to rich all! and inspiring insights into what inspires After our mihi whakatau and opening them and drives them to write. We ended addresses we handed over our conference day two with a night of wearable arts, to our amazing MC, Rita Palmer. Rita Japanese drummers, Bubbles, Bites and kept us running to time, and entertained Banter at Palmerston North’s jewel; Te and inspired as she led us all through Manawa. our conference experience. On the final day of the conference Our conference got underway with Dr Rae Si’ilata began the morning Dr Peter Johnson’s powerful keynote with her moving presentation that left address. He reminded us about conference delegates reaching for the engagement, self regulation and the tissues. Rae shared insights into Pasifika choices we make in the language we use literacy success and some of the hurdles that result in a self extending system our Pasifika children encounter in our 61 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

education system. Then we were treated Author to the world of Donovan Bixley’s mind as he shared how creates and develops his ideas and books. Our final session was from Nathan Mikaere Wallis who deepened delegates’ understanding of the many changes children’s brains go through as they grow; how this brain development enables them to read, and what is needed in children’s lives to support this. The 41st NZLA conference roopu and our conference organiser, Rosemary Hancock, thoroughly enjoyed organising Sarah McCord, Principal, Ruahine the conference. We are very grateful to School.Sarah joined the Ruahine our sponsors and exhibitors, workshop and team at the beginning of 2018 after a keynote presenters; Kaumatua; Wiremu number of years as prinicpal of a rural and Trieste Te Awe Awe, Nga tamariki o te school near Whanganui. She began her Huinga Manu; Ross Intermediate School career as a new entrant teacher in North Kapa Haka with Whaea Jay and Whaea Canterbury and since then has taught Paiana; our NZLA National Executiv; and in the Manawatu area. Sarah holds a to our delegates for joining and supporting masters degree in educational leadership us. and loves working with people to help them be the best they can be! Sarah has Ngā mihi a passion for literacy, the arts and rural Sarah McCord, Conference Convenor education. In her spare time she enjoys On behalf of our roopu; Judy Aitken, gardening and cooking, and is currently Margot Mackie, Sonia Mudgway, Rita learning the piano and a martial art. Palmer, Jan Watts and Viv Wimms. [email protected]

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NZ Literacy Association 42nd Conference, Christchurch 2019 Workshop Submissions

Interested in presenting a workshop?

.... then please fill out the form athttps://nzla.org.nz/ giving as much information as possible. This will allow us to complete the fullest picture on the Workshop you are offering. The over- arching themes for the conference workshops are...

• Learning through the arts - drama, storytelling, visual arts, puppets, dance, music... • Love of literature- inspiring our students with a love of literacy and learning - library, engagement, authors, illustrators, creativity, rich literature, poetry... • Sharing our practice-based inquiries and research - including spiral of inquiry, NZLA research, Kāhui Ako research...

All workshops will be an hour duration

Workshops submissions close Monday 6 May

If you have any questions, please contact: [email protected]

The Marie Clay Literacy Trust conference workshop presenter awards All non-commercial NZ workshop presenters will be eligible to enter a draw for one of five $1000 prizes. Draw supervised by the Conference committee. The Trust will not engage in any correspondence. Winners will be announced at the closing ceremony.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Oi Frog! Kes Gray, illustrated by Jim Field ibsn 978-1-98-854220-1 Hodder Children’s Books, London2015 ISBN 978 1 444 91086 5, picture book Reviewed by Jan Watts

If you are looking for a book for younger children with top scores for fun, silliness and hilarity, then Oi Frog! is the one. It has children in fits of laughter, and they very quickly begin to innovate on the ridiculous rhyming text. Frog, previously confident that he could sit where he liked, suddenly is told by a very bossy cat with extremely fixed ideas, that all animals have special places to sit, and that the rules around this are not in any way flexible. Frog contests cat’s edicts, explores other possibilities, asks a fatal question and the story doesn’t end well. The story bounces along, and Jim Field’s illustrations are full of mischief as he pictures the characters of cat and frog and depicts animals who are not at all happy with their designated places. Read it - your children will adore it. And when you can’t get enough, head straight back to your favourite book shop for Oi Dog!, Oi Cat! And Oi Duck-billed Platypus!

The old man Sarah V, illustrated by Claude K Dubois Gecko Press, Wellington, 2018 ISBN 978 1 776571 91 8 Hardback picture book Reviewed by Jan Watts

This is a thought-provoking and mov- ing story which encourages discussion about poverty, compassion and justice. An older man sleeping rough walks along the city streets trying to warm up after a wet and bitterly cold night, checking out rubbish bins for food to try to assuage his hunger. 67 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

He tries to catch up on some sleep in a park, but police move him on, and when he tries a shelter for the homeless he is turned away because he cannot remember his name. Just when it seems his day can only get worse, he is noticed by a young girl who speaks to him kindly, gives him an unexpected gift and accidentally reminds him of his name, restoring both his hope and his identity. The water colour pencil illustrations in grey and sepia set the scene and background the story which is told with minimal text. This story can be a tough read, and may be confronting to adults, making us think about our own reaction to homeless people, but it is a great discussion starter for children across a range of ages, and a great text for exploring the idea that “human beings are more than their circumstances” (Kirkus starred review). News from the Councils

Southland range of people attending, members of the public as well as from primary, secondary The NZLA Annual Meeting was held schools and Early Childhood sector. in Wellington in June. The Southland Council was represented by Gina NZLA South Island Leadership Workshop March White as delegate and Joyce Wakelin as observer. Wonderful to have new This was held in Invercargill this year. It people attending as this is spreading the was great to catch up and share ideas and knowledge base and part of our strategy knowledge with all the other South Island to build our succession plan. associations. The NZLA conference in Palmerston Author & Illustrator Workshop - North was attended by Diane Goffin Term 2 our Dame Marie Clay Early Teacher David Elliot and Raymond Huber were Recipient. I know Diane was looking our guest writers, the writer workshops forward to the keynote speakers and had for years 5 - 8. These were well attended quite a dilemma choosing the workshops by students from throughout Southland. she wanted to partake in. David held an illustrators' workshop on Nathan Wallis the Saturday morning for some very keen and budding illustrators. Our term 1 event was a great success with Nathan sharing his wisdom, humour Dreamweaver Programme and commonsense approach to brain The Invercargill Licensing Trust has development. He had a morning session continued their sponsorship of Liz that looked at brain development from 0 Miller’s Dreamweaver storytelling - 7 years and in the afternoon delving into programme in schools in Invercargill the mysterious workings of the teenage and Bluff. The programme is now brain - very fascinating. We had a wide underway. Liz is renowned for holding 68 Vol. 34 No.1 2019 captive audiences of children with her Wai Au? Who Am I?” Entries were for passion for storytelling. Tania Faulkner- Years 1-3, Years 4-6 and Years 7-8. The McKenzie will work alongside Liz again quality of entries overall is very strong this year delivering stories, gaining more and are yet to be judged, a feat I do not experience and skills. Many of the envy as there are some amazing art pieces children now attending a Dreamweaver and the creativeness of our tamariki never session have parents who also have fond fails to astound. The winning pieces will memories listening to Liz telling stories be displayed at the City Library where we to them when they were at school. also will have the prize giving.. Literacy Symposium - Teachers for Books for Babies Teachers Funding for the books has been from Our inaugural Literacy Symposium was donations from Southland Community held in 2017. It was very successful and Trust, The Invercargill Licensing Trust the feedback was teachers want this to Foundation and the Mataura Licensing be a regular event. A decision was made Trust. Each newborn baby in Southland to do this biannually and already we are is given a quality picture book along with in the process of planning for next year. a welcome letter for parents explaining the The date for this is Saturday 18 May value of literacy in the home and library 2019. information. We continue to receive International Storytelling extremely positive feedback from the new Once again the very capable sub- mums. committee of Liz, Tania and Daphne brought to Southland the International Storytellers, Diane Ferlatte from California and Anna Lorraine Dallas Jarrett from Australia, both outstanding storytellers. Each year, the committee endeavors to have the storytellers visit Waikato different schools throughout Southland and in 2018 they told their stories Term three saw a lovely celebration lunch to children at 3 Invercargill schools, to honour two of our WLA members for and two rural schools. This event is special accolades. Wendy Carss and Joan becoming a well-known part of this Arts Gibbons. Joan received a Service Award Festival. Liz is the driving force behind that the WLA nominated her for and this event, and Southland owes her a what a very worthy recipient. Joan has great deal for her continued passion for been an active part of the WLA for many the power of story. years and first joined the Waikato Reading Association in 1971. She joined the WRA Ko Wai Au? Who Am I? committee in 1984. She has been the A literacy/visual art competition was held editor for the Literacy Forum (NZLA in September, with the theme being “Ko journal) which she held for 12 years. 69 NEW ZEALAND LITERACY ASSOCIATION

Joan has just resigned from the Waikato facilitator. She shared her wealth of Literacy Association committee this year knowledge which will support many in March 2018. This marks 47 years as a teachers using the English Language member of the association and 33 years on Learning Progressions (ELLP) effectively. the committee. An event that really supported teachers. We also acknowledged the recent Over 100 teachers and learning assistants appointment of Wendy Carss to the were able to share top tips from Jane.These International Literacy Association (ILA) Board of Directors. This is a huge honour are some of the key points she outlined and one of only three New Zealanders during her presentation: who have achieved this; one being the • Each stage takes at least two years notable Dame Marie Clay. Heather Bell to progress through for an English has also had the honour of being on the language learner and that teachers Board, from the Auckland Council was must remember that stages do not able to join us for the luncheon. match curriculum levels. We are thrilled to have Wendy • Don't be fooled by competent social continuing to support the WLA and speakers. It takes 5-7 years to gain directly share with us some of the global proficiency with academic language. literacy issues. • Vocabulary learning is the key - plan Here are a few words written by for vocab to be introduced alongside Heather Downing from Matangi School, current areas of inquiry. Hamilton, who received a Marie Clay Jane also reminded us about the many Early Career award to attend the 2018 New Zealand Literacy Conference held in wonderful resources available from the Palmerston North: MInistry of Education, and in particular, “This conference was amazing. I have the pages in the blue and green books that been inspired, validated and encouraged highlight "where to next in writing," after throughout the NZLA conference and I all, teaching is what we need to be focusing am incredibly grateful. Peter Johnston’s on once we've made an assessment presentation about engaged, self-extending judgement. literate communities caused my heart to The team work really hard to provide flutter as I discovered through his work our region with relevant workshops. We and research, reasons for a teaching style have finalised our events calendar for 2019 that I am naturally inclined to. This was and are looking forward to some time with a validating and powerful discovery, one family and friends before we kick off next that has opened my eyes to other kindred year with a presentation by Michael Irwin, spirits with matched teaching practices author of “Educating Boys”. and priorities to my own.” We have just had a great turnout to our Jane van der Zeyden event in Todd Burton Term 4 – “HELP with ELLP!” Jane is a Waikato Delegate Speech Language therapist and Literacy 70 LITERACY FORUM N.Z. Vol. 34 No.1 2019 What were we reading in 2009?

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We have limited copies of back issues of NZLA Forum available for purchase. To enquire, contact: [email protected]

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