KEY POINTS:
Gratifyingly, New Zealand publishers continue to serve our children well. If you're looking to fill a few Christmas stockings, here are my picks of some of the best children's reads of the year.
For the littlies there is Cork on the Ocean (Random House, $19.99), written by Mark Sommerset and sparingly illustrated by Rowan. Like many successful books ostensibly aged at the younger generation, it works on more than one level. Parents will have great fun reading this adventure to their youngsters.
Random House has also recently published Gavin Bishop's latest, the rambunctious Rats ($29.99). Mrs Polly Piper has hundreds of unwelcome long-tailed and bewhiskered intruders in her house and enlists the help of Rapscallion Claw to drive them out.
But maybe there is a way they can live happily together.
Another Random publication is Tahi One Lucky Kiwi ($29.99), written by Melanie Drewery and inventively designed and illustrated by John O'Reilly and Ali Teo. Based on a true story about a courageous North Island brown kiwi, it's a wonderful melding of fiction and fact.
I've greatly enjoyed Sherryl Jordan's Denzil fantasy series for 8 to 10-year-olds. The latest, The Wednesday Wizard (Scholastic, $16.99), tells the story of a boy apprentice, living in medieval times, who finds himself catapulted into the 21st century. He is faced with a seemingly impossible task: to get back to his own time and warn his wizard master of the terrible fate that awaits him.
Gecko Press, which until now has concentrated on translating award-winning children's books from around the world, has broken the mould with the locally written Snake and Lizard ($19.99). Written for the emerging reader by the always-delightful Joy Cowley, and whimsically illustrated by Gavin Bishop, it's an utterly charming selection of stories about two unlikely friends.
Des Hunt, who writes fast-paced adventure yarns for boys 8 to 12, has written a sequel to Frog Whistle Mine. He liked the boy character, Tony, so much he wanted to resurrect him for his latest book, Shadows in the Ice (HarperCollins, $16.99).
Tony and his old friend Rose find themselves delving into the mystery of a frozen body in Fox Glacier. I always like the way Hunt uses conservation themes in his mysteries. The eerie and compulsively readable Inna Furey (Huia, $20) is Isabel Waiti-Mulholland's first book for young adults. Leanne befriends Inna and gets caught up in her disappearance.
Who, or what is Inna? The author is currently writing more in this series.
Maurice Gee's most recent book for young adults, Salt (Puffin, $17.95), is a superbly written science fiction/fantasy adventure. Pampered Pearl and her maid Tealeaf join forces with downtrodden Hari to try to save his father from Deep Salt, a mysterious mine.
The most satisfying young adult book for me this year was The Sea-Wreck Stranger (Longacre Press, $18.99), by Anna Mackenzie. This is a beguiling story about a girl who finds a man washed up on her windswept island. Where does he come from and how can Ness keep him safe from the superstitious community she lives in?
Mackenzie's prose is outstanding and I am very much looking forward to the sequel.
- Detours, HoS
