Tamatea Toa

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.

I’m working with children from Manurewa West School on a bilingual (Māori and English) book about Matariki. As part of the project we went out to Kurawaka Animation Studio in West Auckland and the children got to learn digital illustration skills from Stan, Dean, Wailer and Jayden. It’s an awesome program they’ve got going teaching…

Hey family if you want some reading material to inspire your kids and keep up their reading levels during the lock down, you could try Reading Warrior eBooks. They’re just $2.95 each during this time and family friendly. How about this book: Samoan Heroes – 38 stories of achievers who have Samoan ancestry. It includes…

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…

Massive arohas and shout out to Indira Stewart and the team at Radio NZ for hosting our team of Flat Bush student writers and recording them reading their stories. An awesome experience for all of us! #flatbushwriters #readNZ #writingwarriors

When positive role models inspire (breathe life into) the next generation it’s always powerful. Janine Williams and her husband Charles are amazing – you can see their murals and sculpture all over NZ and in NY, France, China and the Pacific too. Janine is Ōtara-raised and shared wisdom with young writers at her old school,…