Awesome Aotearoa

Margaret Mahy's History of New Zealand

Margaret Mahy

Illustrated by Trace Hodgson

New Zealand history like never before!

“ … Look for New Zealand on the map. There is the North Island like some long-necked creature leaping up and away, trying to escape from the South Island and Stewart Island, anxious to have a few adventures on its own. But the South Island, sternly oblong, holds it back and Stewart Island finally anchors it down. ‘You’re not having any adventures without me,’ it mutters. “Don’t think you can leave me behind just because I’m smaller than you two!’

“For New Zealand is certainly an adventurous country … we have forests and rocky beaches. We have earthquakes and volcanoes, and pools of boiling mud and these days we also have the All Blacks—a world famous rugby football team. Earthquakes, boiling mud and rugby players! Who could wish for more?

“And New Zealand seems to be one of those countries that has crumbs in its bed and needs to wriggle around in order to be comfortable. It buries bits of itself and then pushes other pieces up. It is not one of those countries that lies around peacefully yawning from time to time and having a bit of a snooze …”

The famous children’s writer joins forces with her country’s top political cartoonist in this hilarious and irreverent history of Aotearoa—or New Zealand, to use its other name.

About the author

Margaret Mahy is a prolific writer of children’s books, and winner of the 2006 Hans Christian Andersen Award. She has won the Carnegie Medal three times (1982, 1986 and 1987), the Young Observer Fiction Prize (1986), the Italian Premier Grafico Award (1976) and the Dutch Silver Pencil Award (1977). She has also been awarded the Esther Glen Medal of the New Zealand Library Association six times, been appointed a writing fellow in New Zealand and Australia, and in the United States her works have won awards and been included in prestige listings by journal editors, librarians and educationalists.

In 2005 Harper Collins published Margaret Mahy: A Writer’s Life by Tessa Duder. In the same year, she was awarded the $60,000 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. She lives in Governors Bay in the South Island of New Zealand.

About the illustrator

Trace Hodgson is New Zealand’s foremost newspaper cartoonist. His work regularly appears or has appeared in the New Zealand Herald, National Business Review, The Press, The Listener and Sunday Star-Times.