One of the stops on last week's tour was 167-pupil Pompallier Catholic School in Kaitaia, where he told the children about his 'deeply unhappy" childhood.
He was a "tough, angry little kid" with a hard-drinking, violent mother whose relatives would fight and wreck the house. He was a talented child but his family, with the exception of his father, only ever put him down.
At the age of 11 he ran away and tried, unsuccessfully, to impersonate a 16-year-old so he could get a job. At the age of 13 he was made a state ward and sent to a boys' home.
Mr Duff said he decided then that no child of his would grow up in an unhappy environment.
He asked the Pompallier children what they were good at and what they wanted to do when they grew up. They were reluctant to speak up or sing their own praises at first, but eventually a few future architects and engineers emerged, as well as a welder, a doctor, an astronomer, a journalist and even a cryptozoologist.
The children asked Mr Duff about France, where he now lives, and he lamented the fact the French don't sell bacon bones for a proper boil-up.
Starting last Monday the author visited Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Pukemiro, Kaitaia Intermediate, Pompallier Catholic School, Waiharara School, Pukenui School, Ngataki School, Te Kao School and Te Hapua School. His tour tied in with a Books in Homes trustees meeting at Ahipara and the opening of a new depot by Mainfreight, a Books in Homes sponsor.
Mr Duff said he had been back to Camberley School many times since 1993 and had been heartened by the changes he had seen.
"The kids don't look like they're hurting as much, there's a little bit less anger and more positivity."
He believed that was part of a wider change but Books in Homes had played a part.
Mr Duff said if children decided reading books was not for them, they were making a conscious decision to be failures in life.
"We don't want them to be failures, that's why we're here."
