Kids into books: Night Race to Kawau

Author: Tessa Duder

Publisher: Puffin Books, $12.95

Age Group: 8-12 years


The early sun was shining through the turquoise and navy stripes of her curtains, casting mysterious deepwater blue shadows across her room.

The curtains were the only new furnishings because most of the family's spare money went on the boat.

But Sam loved her attic room. She liked to think of the other children - her father and his father before him - who had slept in the same bed and kept their clothes in the same kauri chest of drawers.

They too would have been able to stand at the window in the mornings and look across the shining water to Rangitoto Island silhouetted against the eastern sky.