Bruiser

 

Bruiser  Gavin Bishop

 

Bruiser                                                    

Gavin Bishop
Random House, 2011
Picture book, 32 pages, 
Paperback
ISBN 978 1 86979 449 1

 

Get out of my way! I’ve got a motorway to build! 

Bruiser is a massive digger, a machine with a mission. Bruiser’s story begins with a counting sequence following his usual run of work. 

On Monday he ploughed through five hills. 

As the amount of work builds up, so does the destruction. 

On Wednesday he tore up three forests, and flattened a paddock of daffodils. 

And so it goes on (like a mechanised version of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar).

Then on Friday Bruiser gets stuck in a muddy ditch. His vibrations dislodge a magpie’s nest and its chick and for the first time Bruiser is forced to re-examine what he is doing. He has a change of heart and starts swerving around hills instead of ploughing through them.

 Bruiser’s reformed behaviour is very funny and quite touching. A young reader spotted that Bruiser’s exhaust smoke rises in small heart-shaped clouds, whenever he looks at the magpies. Another young reader demanded to know HOW Bruiser pulled open the tab on a can of oil. The correct answer is that Bruiser is a very clever machine.

 With its whizzing wheels and flying mud (and language to match) this is a delightful book to read aloud.

Gavin Bishop’s bold illustrations give Bruiser tremendous impact on the page, with massive black tyres and orange body work. (Nevertheless, Bruiser has a clearly delineated face capable of a range of expressions.) The rocks, flowers and trees he moves about are skilfully shaped from textured paper. Darker paint is applied to each succeeding scene as Bruiser gets stuck in failing light and carries out the rescue of the magpie chick in near-darkness.

Bruiser is dedicated to the rebuilders of Christchurch after the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 to which is added, Look to the future boldly. Remember the past gently.

Trevor Agnew, 2011

 

A Manulele in a Mango Tree:
Le Manulele o nofo i le Mago:
A Pacific Christmas

 

A Manulele in a Mango Tree:
Le Manulele o nofo i le Mago:
A Pacific Christmas
Sarona Aiono-Iosefa
Ill. Steven Dunn
Translator: Le’autuli Sauvao, MNZ                    

Reed (2004)
Oratia (2025)
Picture book, Song book
Paperback, 32 pages
ISBN  978-1-99-004292-8

 

This cheerful (and sing-able) book provides a Pacific variant of the beloved Christmas song. It was originally published by A.H. & A.W. Reed in 2004, with the slightly daunting title, ‘Two Cans of Corned Beef and a Manulele in a Mango Tree: a Pacific Christmas’.  Today, 21 years later, it is a timeless classic, beloved across the Pacific.

Oratia have republished it in their Moana Oceania series, as A Manulele in a Mango Tree: Le Manulele o nofo i le Mago: A Pacific Christmas. It is a bi-lingual book with an English and Samoan text

The author, Sarona Aiono-Iosefa, a Samoan New Zealander, has provided some Polynesian elements in the traditional Christmas mix of gifts, first outlined in ‘A Partridge in a Pear Tree’. Her Pacific version begins with a manulele (flying bird) in a mango tree, followed by two cans of corned beef, three frangipanis, four rolls of tapa and five pairs of jandals.

Steven Dunn’s coloured wood-block illustrations are magnificent, particularly those showing people’s activities. The ‘nine hats a-hiding’ are seen providing their owners with cover at an Islands church service on a White Sunday, while the eight chiefs a-chatting, seven women weaving and ten hula dancers are all full of life. His hand-painted colours are strikingly beautiful, especially in the illustration of the three frangipanis.
The translation is by Le’autuli Sauvao [Le’autuli’ilagiTautua Malaetā Sauvao] MNZM

A glossary is not really needed; the illustrations leave readers in no doubt about what the six lavalava are, or what the seven women are weaving. Nevertheless, here is a bonus glossary.

Glossary for non-Pacific folk:
Corned beef – once an important element of modern Pacific Islands diet
Frangipani – a scented flower
Jandals – popular light footwear in New Zealand and Pacific (Ja-panese sa-ndals); flip-flops.
Lavalava – colourful cotton skirt, from Samoa
Mango – sweet, juicy tropical fruit
Manulele – a flying bird, a metaphor for freedom
Tapa – traditional cloth, made from mulberry bark

Trevor Agnew, written 13 May 2026 as an update of 2004 review

 Mister Whistler  Margaret Mahy  Gavin Bishop

Mr Whistler  Margaret Mahy
Ill. Gavin Bishop
Gecko Press (2012)
Picture book, 32 pages, Paperback
ISBN  978 1 877467 91 2

This picture book was published just after the death of Margaret Mahy (1936-2012) but Gavin Bishop was able to show her its proof sheets a few weeks before she died. The same proof sheets were displayed at her funeral and memorial services which celebrated her life and achievement.

Mister Whistler is a little gem of a story about an absent-minded young man catching a train. Gavin Bishop’s evocative water colour illustrations capture both the atmosphere of the 1950s and Mister Whistler’s ebullient personality. He is so lively that he even sings and dances in his sleep. When he goes to catch the train to Whistlestop, he is so happily humming and dancing that he misplaces his ticket. (Delighted readers will spot the missing ticket.) Searching thoroughly, Mr Whistler removes his clothes in the opposite order to which he dressed earlier in the morning. Coat, jacket, waistcoat, shirt and trousers are all removed and searched. “No ticket! Nothing!” 

All through the complex process, Mr Whistler has been dancing and, to his surprise, people on the station platform have filled his hat with money. “What dancing!” they cried. “What energy! What grace!” 

Finding his ticket, Mr Whistler tucks it in his mouth while he swiftly puts all his clothes back on again. Unfortunately, in the excitement of getting on the train, Mr Whistler swallows his ticket. 

“Wasn’t it a lucky thing he’d earned all that money with his wild dancing?”

Gavin Bishop’s imaginative illustrations are a magnificent series of variations on a theme as Mr Whistler dresses, undresses and dresses again. His movements are marvellous and echo the musical notes which twine their way through the pictures. Every aspect of a 1950s wooden railway station’s architecture has been immortalised in a simplified form. (Railway stations had gardens in those days, and this one has lovely pansies.) 

Young readers who look carefully at the advertising placard on the platform will spot the lady in the poster responding to Mr Whistler’s dancing. They will also be intrigued to see who is seated in front of Mr Whistler in the train.

Mr Whistler is a wonderful farewell to Margaret Mahy.

  Trevor Agnew, 2012  [Review 2584]

Bill Nagelkerke's Emily

 

Emily’s Penny Dreadful 
Bill Nagelkerke

 

Emily’s Penny Dreadful (2016)                
Bill Nagelkerke
Paperback, 146 pages

Penny Dreadfuls were cheap and disreputable fiction magazines, offering lively stories of highwaymen, murderers and other desperadoes, popular among boys and young men in the Victorian times. When the home of Emily’s Uncle Raymond burns to the ground, the only thing the grumpy writer manages to save is a single, 150-year-old Penny Dreadful.
Emily (9) is precocious; she knows this because Uncle Raymond has not only told her so but taught her how to spell it. Emily is also resentful, because she has only had her own bedroom for two weeks. Now she has to move in with her sister Sibbie, to make room for her homeless aunt and uncle. Tensions rise. Emily and Uncle Raymond are soon sparring over grammar, spelling and metaphors. 

“People who write books are always grumpy,” concludes Emily, “They can’t help it. They suffer from brain-strain, Dad says.”

Gradually Emily realises how serious a matter it is for a writer to lose his computer, back-up discs, notes and drafts. Uncle Raymond, of course, is full of self-pity, “I shall very likely never write another word,” he moans.

After Emily borrows the Penny Dreadful, she is inspired to try writing her own. Her first attempts – reproduced in full as a story within a story – are the highlight of this book. Emily calls it The Devil’s Element – a reference to the phosphorus once used for matches – and her first sentence reads, “It was a dark and story night.” Naturally Emily has her own Thurberish justification, “Reading a book in bed means it’s a story night. So there.”

Young readers will enjoy seeing how some of the characters in the tear-jerking saga resemble Emily’s family. The plucky heroine Miley is particularly thinly-disguised. Sibbie is furious when she recognises her own words. The astute reader will also spot that Emily has learned from Raymond’s grudgingly-given advice. In her story, the villainous kidnapper, known only as Pork Pie, pauses to write down new words in his vocabulary notebook. 

It’s all great fun, and Emily is about to rescue Miley from slave labour in a match factory, when writer’s block strikes. Both Emily and Raymond have run out of ideas. Now they are forced to swallow their differences and co-operate to get Miley to freedom and Emily’s book to a happy ending.
The result confirms Raymond’s admission that “All writers are liars and thieves,” (a line possibly purloined from Jack Lasenby) and brings events to a satisfactory conclusion.

Emily’s Penny Dreadful may indeed be dreadful but it is dreadful in a very enjoyable way. Bill Nagelkerke has created a light-hearted book which not only contains a guilty secret and an adventure but also provides a practical guide to young writers who want to tell a story of their own. This book is, in the very best sense, dreadful fun.

Trevor Agnew, 23 December 2015

Emily, the Dreadfuls, and the Dead Skin Gang
Bill Nagelkerke

 

Emily, the Dreadfuls, 
and the Dead Skin Gang                Bill Nagelkerke (2017)
Novel, Paperback, 168 pages

 

“I can read my stories to you,” said Emily…“They’re Penny Dreadful type stories, full of heroes and villains and exciting getaways and things like that.”

Emily is back!
This novel, Emily, the Dreadfuls, and the Dead Skin Gang, sees the return of would-be writers Emily (9) and her grumpy Uncle Raymond, a comical couple, who first appeared in Emily’s Penny Dreadful (2015). Having lost his computer in a fire, Uncle Raymond is still trying to re-start his writing career, while Emily has been inspired by one of his old Penny Dreadfuls (popular Victorian magazines, full of lurid crimes and dramatic escapades) to write her own story, Dead Skin.

Although Dead Skin is supposed to be a co-operative effort by Raymond and Emily, it is Emily who does most of the work. This adds to the fun because both writers are strong-minded and thin-skinned. Chapters of Dead Skin form a story within the story.
“Another audacious burglary!”

The Emily series is constantly amusing as the reader moves from one narrative to another, especially when Emily adapts events around her (and ‘borrows’ ideas from Uncle Raymond and her friends).
Events in the main story quickly turn up in a similar but funnier form in Emily’s hand-written manuscript. After Emily and her three best friends try to form a gang called the Dreadfuls, we see the Dead Skin gang vowing to capture the burglars who “use dust as a weapon as well as dangerous and threatening words.”
The various authors all play fair with their readers. The clues are all present, although craftily concealed, red herrings are seen, and shivers run down spines. Somebody even gets to say, “Beware, this is a trap.”

This story is a cheerful adventure, which gently spoofs both the Penny Dreadful style of adventure and the later efforts of Enid Blyton. It also provides positive encouragement and a good example for young people with writing potential.

Trevor Agnew
31 August 2017

 

 

 

Kiwi Health Heroes  
Caitlin Timmer-Arends & Rebecca Waddell
Illustrator: So-Young Cho

 

Kiwi Health Heroes                      

                                               
Caitlin Timmer-Arends 
& Rebecca Waddell,
Illustrator: So-Young Cho
Bateman (2026)
Non-fiction, 72 pages, Paperback
ISBN 978 0 77689 168 9 

 

 

 

Kiwi Health Heroes is an account, written in a simple chatty style, introducing the lives of some thirty people who have made a change in our health and medical services. Each brief biography is used as an exemplar of determined people overcoming obstacles. The aim is to provide inspirational models for young readers. While some of the heroes are familiar figures – such as Nurse Maude and Peter Button – most of them are relatively unknown. The authors have researched well and found a wide range of high-achieving Kiwis in the health sector. I was impressed by what these people have accomplished. Doctors, like Peter Snow who identified Tapanui Flu, and innovators, like Colin Murdoch who invented the disposable syringe, are obvious choices but the authors have also honoured such unsung heroes as lab technicians, pharmacists and administrators.

 

Best of all, they have included a forgotten group, the patients. They begin with 19^th century missionary children one of whom was dosed with a mixture of rhubarb, water and burnt shells and another whose hare-lip was treated by a ship’s surgeon. Then there are more recent young patients who suffered from diabetes, alopecia, ADHD and Kawasaki disease. Each account is interesting and always acknowledges the professional assistance and family support involved.

 

It is unfortunate that this otherwise useful book has no index but it does have a set of factual notes about each hero on the Credits pages. On the plus side every entry has a pick-a-path feature inviting readers to follow their interest through the pages. ‘To learn about another amazing and strong woman turn to Tupou’s story on page 58.’

 

So Young Cho’s colour illustrations are a delight. Each person’s picture captures their personal achievement visually, so Dr Elizabeth Gunn is shown in her wartime Captain’s uniform giving the side eye to a tooth, a reminder of her encouragement of dental routines at health camps. Ehsan Vaghefi’s eye-scanning work is exemplified by a band of cheerful cartoon eyeballs queuing for a scan.

 

This review originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of Magpies magazine.

 Trevor Agnew, 4 Feb 2026 [Review 3818]

 

Wild Life: An Animal History of Aotearoa  Philippa Werry       
 

 Wild Life: 
An Animal History of Aotearoa                    

Philippa Werry (2026)
Oratia
Non-fiction, 100 pages         
ISBN 978 1 99 004298 0 

 

Where would we be without Philippa Werry? For years she has provided New Zealand children with story books, picture books and, above all, history books.

Her latest offering, Wild Life: An Animal History of Aotearoa, does exactly what its title says; it looks at how our country’s birds, insects and animals got here. We also learn how they survived or didn’t survive.

Werry knows how to appeal to young readers. Her account begins with a 14-year-old schoolboy finding the fossil remains of trilobites, some 505 million years old, near Motueka in 1948.  When Zealandia separated from Gondwanaland it carried a population of ancestral birds and insects, some of whose evolved descendants are, remarkably, still with us. The word ‘remarkably’ is highly appropriate because Philippa Werry’s account of what happened to our wildlife in recent millennia shows a high casualty rate. Some creatures, including theropod dinosaurs, burrowing bats, giant penguins and freshwater crocodilians now exist only as fossils.

 

The arrival of humans has brought further changes to our natural world, especially over the last few centuries. The Māori relationship with Aotearoa’s birds, reptiles and sea creatures is deftly sketched in, complete with the arrival of new mammals, kiore and kūri. Early contact by Europeans seeking a southern continent, seal skins or whale oil, introduced the deadly Norwegian rat, as well as (the slightly less deadly) cats, dogs, pigs and goats. Settlers from Europe introduced familiar farm and domestic animals for agriculture and transport bringing further challenges to native wildlife.

Anyone who has read a 19^th Century newspaper will also know of disastrous importations which further upset the balance of nature. Sparrows and rabbits seem to have been introduced for nostalgic reasons. Ferrets, stoats and weasels were supposed to end the rabbit problem but snacked on native birds instead. The resulting mixture of ecological tragedy and comedy is nicely captured in Werry’s text. In 1883, Walter Buller spots a huia and records, ‘watching this beautiful bird and marking his noble bearing … before I shot him.’

 

A great strength of this book is its coverage of various native species, with engaging profiles. Who can forget Old Blue the Black robin? Other popular animals including Opo, Bess, Shrek, Phar Lap, Happy Feet and Pelorous Jack remind us of how involved New Zealanders are with animals.

 

A splendid feature of Werry’s account is the way she includes young people in the conservation story. Barrytown school-children alerted Robert Falla to an unknown species of Black petrel.  Kahn Coleman was only twelve when he helped save a colony of peripatus. Less successful was 15-month old Huia Onslow whose mark appears beneath his father, Governor Onslow’s signature on an 1892 warrant to protect huia.

 

Best of all, this book asks (and answers) lots of questions. ‘Who names the Animals?’ produces a lively couple of pages, including some Tolkien surprises.

 

Werry has been indefatigable in ferreting out [sorry] vivid vignettes of some incredible efforts by scientists and conservationists to ensure the survival of many species. An entomologist, Bev Holloway raised a small colony of newly discovered batflies in her airing cupboard, feeding them on mashed bananas and yeast! Aola Holloway studied cave wētā in the depths of the Waitomo caves, using a stick to ward off water rats!

 

In Wild Life Philippa Werry has given us a positive and readable book, full of lively examples of interesting creatures, with a balanced account of valuable conservation work and the threats still facing our wildlife. There are masses of relevant illustrations and an index.

P.S. Good news: the Canterbury Knobbled Weevil is not extinct.

 

Trevor Agnew

 

This review originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of Magpies magazine.

 

The Ghost House  Bill Nagelkerke

The Ghost House                        

Bill Nagelkerke
Cuba Press (2022)
Novel, 180 pages, Paperback

 

The Ghost House

"He watches the boats and their crews, wide-eyed. He had no idea that all this activity existed so close to home."

This young adult novel will appeal to young readers as a ghost tale but they will also find it a lively story about discovery, memories, gaining independence and awakening to the world.

Told in the present tense, The Ghost House follows young David Parkhouse as he copes with the after-effects of his life-threatening medical condition. Frustrated by the slowness of his return to a normal life, David leaves his home "in a mad run" and finds himself in Christchurch’s Red Zone.

(Following Christchurch’s earthquakes, several unstable areas were cleared of their houses and fences, and now remain as re-zoned urban pockets of open grassland, trees and bushes.)

Bill Nagelkerke has created a carefully constructed world of ambiguity and mystery within the unsettling but familiar world of the Red Zone.

Amongst the greenery near the river, David spots an old house, hemmed in by trees and bushes.

"Indeed, the house is old, splendidly intact, but also splintered, bruised, wrinkled with age."

The house, with its protective screen of trees, seems real enough. "…Kauri weatherboards and rimu panelling, a ceiling with a high stud, a steep front gable… a large but plain bay window patterned with pieces of coloured glass that are held in place by leaded strips… "

Yet David is uncertain. He feels summoned by the house, but he also has some doubts about it, A mirage? A dream? A ghost house?

Fascinated and drawn by the old villa David begins regular forays into the Red Zone, meeting some of the foragers, bee-keepers and community gardeners who frequent the region.

Things begin to change for David when he encounters Agnes Bright, the elderly owner of the house, and a forthright speaker. "Are you a squatter? A vagabond? A prowler? A thief?," she demands of David, "Tell me. I’m curious to know."

Agnes doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and she has a poor opinion of young David’s manners.

"Did anyone ever tell you its rude to gawp?, " she snaps at him. Nor is she impressed by his acumen. "Your lack of knowledge in this age of ignorance doesn’t surprise me."

David wonders if Agnes is wacky and worries about his own safety but since he is also very curious about her house, he stays to listen to Agnes’s stories about life in its heyday, with boating parties coming to picnic on the river bank. "Now the land has reverted to what it was before," concludes Agnes, "Earthy and green and empty of houses. A wonderful irony don’t you think?"

There are plenty of ironies in the world David is gradually rediscovering; anomolies created by the quakes. But has he seen everything as it really is? He certainly gains a better idea of himself as he delves deeper into the mysteries surrounding the old house. The alarming list of his symptoms which David compiles at the beginning of the story is amusingly shortened by the end. David also manages to come to a better understanding of his poetry-writing sister, Amber, who resents have to ‘baby-sit’ him.

It is heart-warming to find that Ros and Jamie, two characters from Bill Nagelkerke’s first YA novel, Old Bones (2006), turn up briefly in this story. It was Ros who helped Jamie to find pleasure in boating on the Avon River and, sure enough, the loving couple who paddle up to David in their orange kayak have their own fond memories of the Red Zone to add to the mix.

The conclusion is subtly written and moving but also deeply satisfying.

Bill Nagelkerke’s mastery of words is a constant delight. The authority figures who strike alarm throughout the story are recognised as the lanyard people from the ID tags they wear. It may be the best term from this decade to enter the dictionaries.

The cheerful black and white illustrations throughout the novel by Theo Macdonald do the old house justice.

 

Trevor Agnew