Our Peter Jackson of Children’s Literature?

by Brian Easton - Pundit

How New Zealand businesses succeed internationally.

One of life’s pleasure is sitting with a child on one’s lap reading a book to them: attractive – sometimes mysterious – illustrations, humorous – even mischievous – plots, rhythmic sentences and just enough eccentric words without being obscure. E-readers are no substitute. The children’s section in my local bookshop is growing.

New Zealand appears to have an internationally competitive advantage in children’s books. It probably arises from the strength of our primary schooling system and its commitment to literacy illustrated by our world leadership in readers, books which teach children to read. The School Journal (established in 1907) has also been important; many of our outstanding writers (and illustrators) cut their teeth contributing to it.

The strength of writing for children is evident in the local respect with which those writers are held: three of the twelve recipients of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction are children’s writers: Margaret Mahy, who also TWICE won a Carnegie Medal, the ‘Booker prize’ in children’s fiction (2005), Joy Cowley (2010) and Jack Lasenby (2014). Another three also wrote for children and young adults: Maurice Gee (2004), Patricia Grace (2006) and Owen Marshall (2013). James K. Baxter wrote poetry for children.
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