Waimārama Writers

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.

Stephen Crichton tells how a young Samoan from Australia became one of the stars of the NRL! Stephen Crichton is a Reading All Stars book. Reading All Stars books are written for people who need support with reading, whatever their age. The text is written in short bites, in simple language and with lots of…

Tamatea Intermediate students are Writing Warriors! Look how focused they are.

I’ve spent the last two days in Napier and Hastings encouraging young people to believe in themselves and find out who they are  through reading. Finished at Hastings Boys’ High School whose motto is Ākina. This motto was given to them by local iwi and is a call to paddlers who may be losing energy…

The Reading Tribe is a new book I’ve made where I ask some of New Zealand’s most successful people to share the books that have travelled with them through life. UFC champion Israel Adesanya found safety in the school library from bullies when he was younger and he was inspired to dream big by reading…

Today ‘Alisi Tatafu and I launched our children’s book Rise of the To’a (the MMT story) online in Tonga. We would have been there if it wasn’t for COVID but there’s still so much to be thankful for, especially learning how beautiful Tongan culture is through this whole process.