Five Books for Family Summer Activities

A First Book of New Zealand Backyard Bird Songs, Fred van Gessel, White Cloud/Upstart Press, 24 pages, board book, NZ$27.99  ISBN 978-1-99000-389-9

The Beach Activity Book, Rachel Haydon, Pippa Keel, Te Papa Press, 176 pages, pb, NZ$35  ISBN 978-1-99-116551-0

The New Zealand Night Sky, Alistair Hughes, White Cloud/Upstart Press,  40 pages pb, NZ$27.99 ISBN 978-1-77694-0110

ZIGGLE! The Len Lye Art Activity Book, Rebecca Fawkner, Massey University Press, NZ$35  ISBN 978-1-991016-40-9

Living Big in a Tiny House, Bryce Langston, Potton & Burton, 256 pages, NZ$54.99  ISBN 978-1-98855-058-9

 

 

A pile of summertime non-fiction books provides an invitation to all sorts of family activities. Some of the five New Zealand non-fiction titles here were created with young readers in mind: others for adults. No matter; all of them can inspire a family to try something new together. In fact every one of them can.

A First Book of New Zealand Backyard Bird Songs: What a delight it is to take this book out into the backyard and play some of the bird calls just to see how the resident birds respond. A chance to compare and contrast. Better than rubbing corks on bottles to lure fantails.  Reviewed below, this durable board book has profiles of a dozen familiar birds, as well as recordings of their calls.

The Beach Activity Book The great thing about this book is that it is consciously a family book. While it is written at a level children can understand and enjoy, it is structured and directed at family involvement. Of course, going to a beach (or a river) is usually a family affair so it makes perfect sense. Rachel Haydon has created ’99 ideas for Activities by the Water around Aotearoa New Zealand’ although I suspect her ideas reading scale runs well into three figures. Who knew you could turn a yoghurt container and a bit of plastic wrap into an underwater viewer?

Suggestions for activities include lists of things to look out for, ideas for activities and hints on exploring nooks and crannies. We are encouraged to develop awareness of tides and seasons. The activities of creatures large and small are important here. So are the landscapes they live in and the vegetation they move among. There are many types of beaches and watercourses to be examined. [Moomintroll readers will already know how to make a waterwheel.] There are suggestions for experiments, collections, examples of beach art, ideas about poems and even a guide to making your name in driftwood. Listening, thinking and even smelling have their place in the range of things to do.

There are lots of photos, as well as great illustrations and diagrams by Pippa Keel.  

This is a book that will go to the crib with the family and will be used by the family.

 

The New Zealand Night Sky is the year’s most handsome nonfiction book for young people. Alastair Hughes is responsible for the down-to-earth text and heavenly illustrations as well as the amazing stellar diagrams. He invites young readers, armed only with a warm coat and a pair of binoculars, to explore the wonders of the stars above their heads.

“Every culture has imagined patterns in the stars.”

We can all find the Southern Cross but this guide to the nearer constellations and galaxies encourages readers to go searching for the Magellanic Clouds (Nga Pātari) Orion’s Belt (Tautoru) and Antares (Rehua). Not only does Alistair Hughes include their Māori names but he also provides handsome diagrams of the Māori astronomers’ version of the constellations. Thus the Tail of Scorpius is not only the bow of the great canoe Te Waka o Tamarēreti but is also Maui’s Fish hook. The stars of Matariki (Pleiades) likewise mark the bow of Te Waka o Rangi.

There are splendid double-page features on the Moon, the Sun, the planets, comets and meteors. Little treasure chests of information are scattered generously.  Kiwi pride is also touched with a portrait gallery of New Zealand astronomers and rocket scientists. The stellar link between Pacific voyaging canoes and the Rocket Lab launching is neatly made.

Best of all there are two star maps – Summer and Winter versions – for junior stargazers. Stand by for an influx of aurora-seeking young visitors heading to Lake Tekapo and the Catlins.

ZIGGLE! The Len Lye Art Activity Book is an eye-opener and a mind-opener. I hadn’t realised that, as well as creating lively artworks and animated movies, Len Lye was also a poet and wordsmith. “Ziggle” is a Len Lye original, a word coined to describe the zig-zagging shapes in his film Free Radical.

Rebecca Fawkner’s well-constructed activity book is also a bright, lively introduction to Len Lye’s life and artistic achievement. It is created around a range of imaginative games, exercises, experiments, cartooning, poetry writing and artistic creation – all with plenty of ziggle. Rebecca Fawkner credits Len Lye as an artist who “believed that art moved, art felt, art experimented, that art was noisy, art was in the footpath cracks and art was in outer space.” Her book is based on activities created for the groups of young people who regularly visit the Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth and are intrigued by his moving sculptures.

The book also relates events in Len Lye’s life to his art. Kicking a kerosene tin was the beginning of his career as an artist, while a childhood experience of the Cape Campbell lighthouse with its flashing light controlled by a clockwork mechanism made a lasting impression. His poems inspired his pictures and vice versa. Young readers are invited to write their own poems about some of Len Lye’s pictures as well as finding what sort of pictures his writings inspire. Then there are the waving and writhing sculptures. Each activity suggestion is linked to some aspect of Lye’s life or work.

It is hard to portray animated films in the pages of a book, so Rebecca Fawkner suggests that readers can see such pioneering works as The Peanut Vendor, Free Radicals or The Birth of the Robot at www.ngataonga.org.nz (although they are more easily accessed  on Youtube).

Rebecca Fawkner has done a brilliant job of showing what Len Lye achieved and encouraging young readers  to follow his example. She says Ziggle! offers 65 Len Lye-inspired ways to be an artist, though I think there are many more. These range from trying rubber-band music to creating a blind 3-D self-portrait. New generations of sculptors, poets, painters and animators may find their inspiration here.

Len Lye is shown laughing on the first page of Ziggle! and his good humour permeates all the pages which follow. His own words might thoroughly sum up this book’s approach: “happy-go-lucky alive stuff.”

Living Big in a Tiny House surprised me.  Bryce Langston is a key figure in the Small House movement so I assumed his book (a revised version of the 2018 edition) would mainly be of interest to architects or adults seeking a tiny roof over their heads. What surprised me was how much interest young people show in this book.

Although the illustrations are magnificent – as one would expect in a Potton & Burton title – it is Bryce Langston’s prose that appeals. He is a great storyteller and, in this book, he tells the story of some 52 tiny homes. He begins with his $6,000 tent, the Lotus, which he admits taught him “the true convenience of an inside toilet.”

Each of the tiny houses is given a four-page account and each of them is a delightful essay. We are introduced to the owners, their design concepts and their account of creating it and living in it. The diminutive houses come from all round the world and the range is incredible – from rebuilt railway carriages to converted containers, and from forest cabins to tiny trailers. Materials include canvas, straw, mud, stone, felt and even wood.

Rasa Pescud’s colour photographs are a grand complement to the prose, giving both the big picture and close-up details.

I suspect the young enthusiasts are initially attracted by the idea of a hut of their own and are then drawn in by the intriguing details: stairs that slide away, beds surrounded by plants and rooves that rise hydraulically. With luck this book will help inspire a generation of lateral thinkers and do-it-yourselfers, who will one day be building little houses on Mars.

Trevor Agnew