Online exclusive
1. The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (A&U)
This month, it will be 80 years since D-Day. Pippa Latour, who died in West Auckland late last year aged 102, helped lay the groundwork for the operation’s success by acting as a secret agent in France for Britain during World War II.
“I was not a James Bond-style spy,” said Latour. “I was a secret agent whose job it was to blend into the background and cause quiet chaos.” It was exhausting work; she had several code names, was unable to trust anyone and was often hungry. It was desperately perilous too. Many of the 13,000 SOEs (special operations executives) were killed, including 14 women out of 39 in France. The average life expectancy of male wireless operators in France when she served was six weeks. Latour’s was a truly remarkable life all around, and The Last Secret Agent, co-written with Jude Dobson, is a clear and fluent account. Read the review here.
2. Piki te Ora: Your Wellbeing Journal by Hira Nathan & Jessie Eyre (Allen & Unwin)
An illustrated wellbeing journal for children based on the Māori principles of Hauora (health), from the author of the bestselling Whakawhetai: Gratitude journal (see #5) and a primary school teacher. It has activities and ideas aimed at helping kids learn about different aspects of their health and wellbeing, physical and mental, with room to write and doodle.
3. My Matariki Colouring & Activity Book by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Scholastic)
A 96-page companion to Matariki Around the World from a couple of years back, it’s a colouring-in book based around all aspects of the Matariki star cluster, also with activity guides, word puzzles, drawing tips and some recipes, written with a sprinkling of te reo Māori.
4. Foraging New Zealand by Peter Langlands (Penguin)
Kiwis clearly love the idea of foraging in our forests and fields and riverbanks for edible wild plants, and in current times there’s probably an economic element as well. Liv Sisson’s Fungi of Aotearoa (back in at #7) sold pallet loads when it came out last year, and we can expect Peter Langlands’ book, from the same publisher, to do the same. Langlands is perhaps the country’s only professional forager, collecting wild flora for restaurants and running workshops (you can read more about him here). It’s a chunky guide, 500 pages, which picks out 250 plants and fungi from about 7500 edible species. The book warns of stuff not to touch, and plants that look like others but are verboten. The range is impressive. You may know you can eat samphire and wild chervil but be surprised that you can scarf parts of rengarenga, Pohutukawa stamens and wandering willie.
5. Whakawhetai: Gratitude by Hira Nathan (A&U)
Hira Nathan’s inspirational bilingual gratitude journal, based on the Māori holistic approach to health, was released last year and has made regular returns to charts. The publisher’s blurb in part: “Kia ū ki te pai, kia whai hua ai. (Hold on to what is good and good things will follow.) Discover the four dimensions of hauora: taha tinana (physical), taha hinengaro (mental), taha wairua (spiritual) and taha whānau (family). No matter how difficult life can seem, there is always something to feel grateful for. Taking note regularly of the positives – no matter how small – in each of these areas of your life can have a huge impact on your health and happiness.”
6. Five Wee Pūteketeke by Nicola Toki & Jo Pearson (A&U)
A cute picture book about one of our threatened birds, the pūteketeke or Australasian crested grebe. Toki, the chief executive of Forest & Bird, with Dunedin illustrator Jo Pearson, has riffed on the Five Little Ducks rhyme to celebrate what was last year voted “Bird of the Century” thanks to a campaign by US TV show host John Oliver.
7. Fungi of Aotearoa by Liv Sisson (Penguin)
Fungi enthusiast Liv Sisson’s popular guide to foraging in our fields and forests for mushroom morsels, which came out last year, returns regularly to the bestseller lists and was rightly longlisted for an Ockham award in the illustrated non-fiction category. Sisson makes them sound delicious: “Here are some of the most interesting fungi foods I’ve come across in Aotearoa. Slippery jack mushroom burgers, grilled over charcoal, with a dash of pine oil, served over a bed of creamy mushroom-stock polenta. Mushroom mince dumplings. A porcini mushroom chocolate mousse Yule log. Those first two dishes come from Max Gordy, and the third from Vicki Young – both are top Wellington chefs. When we think outside of the ‘mushrooms on toast’ box, we find that fungi offer us untapped foodie potential.”
8. Moto Mike the Motorbike by Deano Yipadee & Bruce Potter (Scholastic)
A Nee Naw and Friends tale for children. From the publisher: “Singer-songwriter Dean O’Brien has produced yet another toe-tapping, singalong song, this time about Nee Naw’s friend, Moto Mike the Motorbike. Farmer Tom and his tractor are leading the annual pumpkin parade. When the tractor wheel jolts off the edge of the bridge, Tom finds himself in a precarious situation. Enter Nee Naw’s mate, Moto Mike, who swiftly takes action and saves the day.”
9. Hine Toa by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (HarperCollins)
Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku is a respected Māori scholar, an expert on tā moko, and now an emeritus professor. But in 1981, she was the first Māori woman to be awarded a PhD in New Zealand, and she took up political fights, leading protests over the Vietnam War, the 1970 All Blacks tour of South Africa, Waitangi Day, women’s liberation. To achieve success, she had to fight against family pressure, peer contempt, the academic and Māori establishment, racism, sexism and homophobia.
Her childhood, centred around the pā, Ōhinemutu, on the western shore of Lake Rotorua, is richly evoked. “This was a place of drifting thermal mists and streams of trout and crayfish; her family had its own bathhouse, mostly open to the sky and sandy below.” But if anyone still imagines New Zealand in the 50s and 60s as a wholesome pastoral idyll, Hine Toa will dispel those illusions. “Ngāhuia’s parents separated, but to attend her local school she had to live with her abusive father. He beat her and perhaps more.”
This memoir is ultimately a contradiction, “honest but often frustratingly oblique; explicit in some places and coy in others … And yet this is an important book: vital to write, vital to publish and vital to read.”
10. On Call by Ineke Meredith (HarperCollins)
From the Listener: “Meredith writes about being a Kiwi general surgeon, and her memoir is a sharply written, occasionally eye-opening tale of life in the operating room and as a single parent. There are the young victims of a terrible car wreck, tales of prostates and catheters, the high-end call girl with an unusual request. Then there’s exhaustion, worrying about being a good mother, being punched in the face by a patient. And then her parents in Samoa get sick. Is the job worth it? No spoilers, but the memoir ends on a positive note of change.”
(Source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ – week ending May 25)
