Igniting a passion for writing through creative art

I’m making a new book about Black Ferns Sevens try-scoring machine Michaela Blyde. It’s called Strike Hard! The illustrator is Sarah Trolle and Sarah is a teacher too! The korero that goes with this particular picture is that the Black Ferns Sevens team see themselves as a waka, that leaves mana in its wake. “The…

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…

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…

This year Chad Sta-Krucial Robertson and I have been working on an awesome project with the Tuvalu Auckland Community Trust. We made 8 bilingual Tuvaluan children’s books, one representing each island of Tuvalu, and today the books were launched as part of Tuvalu Language Week celebrations. Each book comes with an audio version as well…

X-factor Kiwi kids at St Francis School in Pt Chev. These Tongan children are so proud their brother is on the front cover photo of Rise of the To’a. By the way these children are all siblings … 4 sets of twins … from one family! “You have made a huge impression on children and…