BEST New Zealand Books for Young People, published in 2018

Reservoir Road Book Awards for 2018

BEST New Zealand Books for Young People, published in 2018

A. Picture Books: 

Cook's Cook  Gavin Bishop, Gecko

Oink  David Elliot, Gecko

Who Stole the Rainbow?  Vasanti Unka, Puffin

B. Maori Language Picture Books:

Nga Whetu Matariki i Whanakotia [The Stolen Stars of Matariki]   Miriama Kamo, ill. Zak Waipara, tr. Ngaere Roberts, Scholastic

Te Hinga Ake a Maui i Te Ika Whenua o Aotearoa [How Maui Fished up the North Island]  Donovan Bixley, tr. Darren Joseph, Upstart

C. Non-Fiction:

Mozart: the Man behind the Music  Donovan Bixley, Upstart Press

Kate Sheppard: Leading the Way for Women  Maria Gill, ill. Marco Ivancic, Scholastic

Eliza and the White Camellia  Debbie McCauley, ill. Helen Casey, Mauao

Why is that Lake so Blue?  Simon Pollard, Te Papa Press

D. Junior Fiction:
Finding  David Hill, Puffin

Dawn Raid  Pauline (Vaeluaga) Smith, Scholastic

The Mapmakers’ Race  Eirlys Hunter, ill. Kirsten Slade, Gecko

E. Senior Fiction:

Ash Arising  Mandy Hager, Penguin

Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas  Michael Bennett, ill. Ant Sang, Penguin

Cassie Clark: Outlaw  Brian Falkner, OneTree House

Slice of Heaven  Des O’Leary, Makaro Press

Reservoir Road Book Awards for 2018:
The unrepresentative panel of elderly judges selects the best books published for young people in 2018. 

Their criteria is simply whether a book would encourage the panel to get on their bike and ride from Reservoir Road, Sawyers Bay to the Port Chalmers Public Library in order to borrow it.

Finding the Books:

Any New Zealand bookshop can get these books for you. (If it can’t, it’s not a bookshop.)
Any New Zealand public library will lend you these books.
Either way, you are helping the writers, illustrators and publishers, and encouraging them to produce more good books for young people.

Trevor Agnew   17 Feb 2019

FOOTNOTE 8 August 2019.
I am chastened to report a 100% failure rate in my predictions.
Not one book that I named was a winner!
I still stand by my selections as really good books.
A positive spin would be that there are LOTS of good NZ books out there for young people.

The winners of the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults were announced last night (7 Aug 2019). From 29 semi-finalists, these books were chosen:                                                    

Picture Book: The Bomb, by Sacha Cotter, ill. Josh Morgan
Junior Fiction: The Dog Runner, by Bren MacDibble
Young Adult Fiction: Legacy, by Whiti Hereaka
Non-Fiction: Art-tastic, Sarah Pepperle
Illustration Award: The Bomb, by Sacha Cotter, ill. Josh Morgan
Te Reo Maori: Te Haka a Tanerore, by Reina Kahukiwa, ill. Robyn Kahukiwa
Best First Book Award: Art-tastic, Sarah Pepperle

Picture: Quentin Blake

Chinatown Girl

Chinatown Girl

The Diary of Silvey Chan, Auckland 1942

Eva Wong Ng

Scholastic, 200 pages, paperback, NZ$18

ISBN 978 1 77543 577 8 

 Reviewed by Trevor Agnew

Surprisingly, the best account of NZBC (New Zealand Born Chinese) children adjusting to life within their two cultures is a work of fiction. Chinatown Girl (2005) by Eva Wong Ng has just been released in its second (2019) edition with an eye-catching cover. It is rare for young adult novels to be re-issued but Chinatown Girl has captured readers of all ages as it introduces them to life in war-time central Auckland, as seen through the eyes of Chan Ngun Bo, known to all as Silvey Chan. The oldest reader I know of is in his nineties and he declared that it brought back all his memories of Auckland’s Chinatown in the 1940s.

Silvey is an ordinary twelve-year-old Auckland girl. She has just been inspired by Anne of Green Gables to start keeping a diary. Her first entry is 1^st January 1942  and the first words are ‘Anyone reading this without permission risks blindness or worse: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!’

Silvey is part of a tightly-knit Chinese community. As she works on her family history project for school, Silvey, who was born in New Zealand, learns about life in China, and why her family members came to New Zealand. Meanwhile events around the world have their effect, with the fall of Singapore and the arrival of American troops.
The diary is rich in tiny historical details, such as the tricks the schoolchildren play on their teacher on April Fool’s day, or Silvey watching Ah Yeh (her paternal grandfather) rolling his own cigarettes from a tin of Silver Fern.

Chinatown Girl is also a great introduction to city life in the 1940s, with Lofty Blomfield, five shilling postal notes, sugar rationing, and air raid rehearsals. ‘The bag is to hold a cork to put between our teeth, and cotton wool to stuff in our ears to stop us going deaf if a bomb explodes.’  Modern readers will find school life in the 1940s a very strange world, while Silvey also has to cope with Chinese School at least twice a week.

In the same way that she attends two schools, Silvey is aware of the two ways of looking at events and people: the way of China and the way of Sun Gum Sarn (New Gold Mountain: New Zealand). She emerges as a lively, intelligent observer, able to cope comfortably in both cultures.
The diary’s emphasis is domestic but there are small excitements (Silvey’s accident with a fish hook) and more dramatic moments (a burglary followed by an identity parade) to make Silvey’s account of daily life at 45 Greys Avenue into a real page-turner. The official celebration of Double-Ten (October the 10th) 1942 by the New Zealand Government is an important event for the Chinese in New Zealand. Silvey’s parents make it clear to her that Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s announcement is a turning-point in NZ Chinese history Nevertheless when she attends the Chinese National Day Banquet she still notes that ‘we…listened to lots of boring speeches.’

Readers of all ages will find much to delight them. For example Sylvie’s mother represents the older generation’s determination to eventually return to China. Thus she insists on showing Sylvie how to kill hens - because she will need to do it in China. 

Despite the shortages and fears of wartime, this is a delightfully readable account offering many insights into two cultures.

NOTE: Teachers will find useful background material in the school bulletin compiled by Eva Ng and Jane Thomson. Amongst Ghosts: Memories and Thoughts of a New Zealand-Chinese Family, (Learning Media, Wellington, 1992, ISBN 0 478 05523 4), which includes an account of the lives of Eva’s parents.

Trevor Agnew

8 February 2019

Below is the original

2005 cover of the first 

edition of Chinatown Girl:

Chinatown Girl

 

Chinatown Girl

The Diary of Silvey Chan, Auckland 1942

Eva Wong Ng

Scholastic, 200 pages, paperback, NZ$18

ISBN 978 1 77543 577 8

Surprisingly, the best account of NZBC (New Zealand Born Chinese) children adjusting to life within their two cultures is a work of fiction. Chinatown Girl by Eva Wong Ng has just been released in its second edition with an eye-catching cover. It is rare for young adult novels to be re-issued in New Zealand but Chinatown Girl has captured readers of all ages as it introduces them to life in war-time central Auckland, as seen through the eyes of Chan Ngun Bo, known to all as Silvey Chan. The oldest reader I know of is in his nineties and he declared that it brought back all his memories of Auckland’s Chinatown in the 1940s.

Silvey is an ordinary twelve-year-old Auckland girl. She has just been inspired by Anne of Green Gables to start keeping a diary. Her first entry is 1^st January 1942  and the first words are ‘Anyone reading this without permission risks blindness or worse: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!’

Silvey is part of a tightly-knit Chinese community. As she works on her family history project for school, Silvey, who was born in New Zealand, learns about life in China, and why her family members came to New Zealand. Meanwhile events around the world have their effect, with the fall of Singapore and the arrival of American troops.
The diary is rich in tiny historical details, such as the tricks the schoolchildren play on their teacher on April Fool’s day, or Silvey watching Ah Yeh (her paternal grandfather) rolling his own cigarettes from a tin of Silver Fern.

Chinatown Girl is also a great introduction to city life in the 1940s, with Lofty Blomfield, five shilling postal notes, sugar rationing, and air raid rehearsals. ‘The bag is to hold a cork to put between our teeth, and cotton wool to stuff in our ears to stop us going deaf if a bomb explodes.’  Modern readers will find school life in the 1940s a very strange world, while Silvey also has to cope with Chinese School at least twice a week.

In the same way that she attends two schools, Silvey is aware of the two ways of looking at events and people: the way of China and the way of Sun Gum Sarn (New Big Gold Mountain: New Zealand). She emerges as a lively, intelligent observer, able to cope comfortably in both cultures.
The diary’s emphasis is domestic but there are small excitements (Silvey’s accident with a fish hook) and more dramatic moments (a burglary followed by an identity parade) to make Silvey’s account of daily life at 45 Greys Avenue into a real page-turner. The official celebration of Double-Ten (October the 10th) 1942 by the New Zealand Government is an important event for the Chinese in New Zealand. Silvey’s parents make it clear to her that Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s announcement is a turning-point in NZ Chinese history Nevertheless when she attends the Chinese National Day Banquet she still notes that ‘we…listened to lots of boring speeches.’

Readers of all ages will find much to delight them. For example Sylvie’s mother represents the older generation’s determination to eventually return to China. Thus she insists on showing Sylvie how to kill hens - because she will need to do it in China. Despite the shortages and fears of wartime, this is a delightfully readable account offering many insights into two cultures.

NOTE: Teachers will find useful background material in the school bulletin compiled by Eva Ng and Jane Thomson. Amongst Ghosts: Memories and Thoughts of a New Zealand-Chinese Family, (Learning Media, Wellington, 1992, ISBN 0 478 05523 4), which includes an account of the lives of Eva’s parents.