Fanene Peter Maivia – Son of Samoa

Today we had a cool celebration of 4 bilingual children’s books I worked on with young people of Māori, Samoan, Chinese and Hindi heritage. The kaupapa of the books is how to survive natural disasters. The theme of the series is: You Ready? You can get copies from Auckland Emergency Management.

What a blessing to work with these beautiful Tongan children making a book about how proud they are to be Tongan. The book is bilingual (Tongan and English). The stories they’ve written demonstrate their immense pride in being Tongan. You’ll read about the importance of family and lotu, their favourite Tongan foods and clothing, their…

Need a book about Samoan history and culture for children? We got you! 43 Samoan children living in Sāmoa, NZ, and around the world, are now published authors and illustrators after the launch of our book ‘Sāmoa’ today. We launched the tusi at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Apia. One of my favourite parts was…

I always love sharing stories with young people about how reading can literally save and change your life. Today I was at Wesley College – blessed and inspired by these talented young people.

Today we celebrated the launch of Stand Your Ground, a book I did with young people at Sancta Maria College. This was the first book I made sponsored by the Oceania Literacy Trust which is a trust a few of us started to help improve literacy and wellbeing in our young people. “The students who…

To celebrate Olympics year I asked Kiwi Olympians and Paralympians to write letters to young people sharing what they learned about “success” from their experiences in Tokyo. Then I got each letter illustrated by a different Kiwi children’s book illustrator and put them together in this new work, Standing In My Own Shoes. There’s letters…