Koro Wētā   Heather Haylock   Sara Trolle

 

Koro Wētā
Heather Haylock, ill. Sarah Trolle
Oratia Books (2025)
Picture book, Illustrated story
Paperback, 32 pages
ISBN 978 1 99 004269 0

 

I love my gumboots.

E aroha nei au ki oku kamupūtu.

Heather Haylock has written a delightfully funny bi-lingual book about a small girl’s encounter with one of New Zealand’s largest insects. Her gumboots are an important part of her outdoor life, so the girl is disturbed, one morning, to find a giant insect lurking inside one.

The text is in both English and Māori so the sound effects which follow are:

AHHHHH!  THUNK!  PAKŌ!  THUMP!

PAKŪ!  WHACK!  PAKĒ  WHUMP!  POHU!

This onomatopoiea certainly sums up a common attitude towards wētā. Fortunately, neither the wētā nor the gumboot are harmed in the making of this story. Instead, the girl’s Mum demonstrates the right thing to do. She carries the wētā on her open hand to safety in the nearby ferns. Each morning the girl finds the wētā in her gumboot. Her father explains that the neighbour has cut trees down and the wētā is looking for a new home.

‘He’s looking for somewhere to hide,’ said Mum.

‘Kei te kimi ia i tētahi wāhi huna mōna,’ tā Māmā ki.

Her parents explain that the wētā’s size shows that he is an old one. Mum names him Koro (grandpa) wētā.

The girl tries several ways of keeping the wētā out of her gumboots – including packing them with her father’s smelly socks – but none of the experiments work. Then the girl has an inspiration. If she builds the wētā his own house, he won’t want her gumboots. All the family help and her plan works, with a splendidly humorous twist.

The beautiful colour illustrations by Sarah Trolle create a believable family, while her pictures of the wētā show why it makes the girl nervous. The tusks and antennae certainly look impressive, especially when the girl sets Mum’s phone to video and lowers it into the boot. She finds the wētā looking back at her. By the final picture, koro wētā has become a local resident with a family, truly a creature to be admired.

The translator of this charming tale, Ngairo Eruera, is a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato, who lives in Katikati.

A page of fun facts about wētā is included, providing plenty of material for readers who wish to expand their wētā wisdom.

 

Trevor Agnew 

24 June 2025  [Review 3782]