Tamatea Toa

Much alofa to all those parents who make the tough choice to move their families to places so different to where they’ve come from, just so their children can have amazing futures. This is Sola who attends Nelson Girls College. We worked on a book together in Auckland with other Tuvaluan young people. Now she’s…

This is my favourite part of writing projects with kids: celebrating with the children and their families. This evening we launched The Streets: a celebration of Mt Wellington written by children of Bailey Road School.

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.

“Thank you to former MC student & Author Extraordinare David Riley for the gift of boxes of new books to families in South Auckland so they can start, or add to their own kāinga pukapuka – home libraries. The books are culturally specific e.g. a box of Maori books for a Maori family, Samoan books…

First showing of the art from a new book I’m making for kids about Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow aka “Hammer” an NRL player with the Dolphins. It’s awesome working with Saibai Island artist Tyrown Waigana who’s from the same clan as Hamiso. I’m so excited about this book not just because I get to work with Tyrown,…

Today I received an awesome message from David Ackery, librarian at Waitakere College. “I finally got around to getting a copy of The Reading Tribe. What a great book! So unique, and so NZ. And so much material there for librarians to use to drive reading engagement. We made it into a  feature display at…