Storytelling is powerful

Spent the morning at Flat Bush School with inspirational alumni Willie Maea, Samson Vaotuua, Greg Va’afusuaga, Jay Paniani and Dr Julienne Faletau as they returned to visit their old school. The Writers Group of children interviewed these tuakana for a book of inspiration that will be called Flat Bush Forever.

Today we’re back to work making Tuvalu children’s books with Sagaa Malua, Alamai Sioni and the master Chad Robertson. I love this work because we know it makes a massive difference for children to see themselves represented in literature.

Today we launched my new children’s book Freestyle: the Israel Adesanya Story at City Kickboxing, Izzy’s home gym. This photo is with Izzy and Ant Sang the awesome illustrator. You can get a copy here: https://readingwarrior.com/product/freestylethe-israel-adesanya-story/ “I like the idea of having my story written for kids because I know how hard things were for…

  I was invited to attend the World Final of the Kids Lit Quiz today. Canberra Grammar (Australia) won the final. In the evening we had a dinner and I sat with one of the Australian families. The dad went to buy us a drink and I began talking with the mum. “What kinds of…

On Thursday I was blessed to participate in a rangatahi programme for the uri of Te Ahiwaru – Hapuu of Ihumaatao called Te Ara a Hape. This Kaupapa was designed to support rangatahi and whānau to re-engage with education and inspire their tamariki post COVID. I felt so happy for those rangatahi in the program…

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…