A twelve-year-old girl exploring her Māori roots and an anxious eleven-year-old boy trying to save his rural school are the heroes of two top New Zealand books of junior fiction for 2024.
Nine Girls
Stacey Gregg (Ngati Mahuta, Ngati Pukeko, Ngati Maru Hauraki)
Penguin Random House NZ
Blonde, 12-year-old Titch’s world is turned upside down when her family moves from upmarket Remuera to her mother’s hometown of Ngāruawāhia. Titch’s mother is Māori but Titch looks Pākehā and knows little about her Tainui roots and the historical events that decimated her iwi.
At first she misses her old life in Auckland – until she meets Tania from the p side of the river. Tania is everything Titch wishes she could be: smart, beautiful, staunch, leader of the kapa haka group, unmistakably Māori. They bond over a love of reading books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Lion,The Witch and the Wardrobe, and become best friends, a relationship that deepens when Tania becomes ill.
This multi-layered, loosely autobiographical novel is set during the social protests of the late 1970s and early 1980s: Bastion Point, the Raglan golf course, the Springbok Tour. It also tackles colonisation through a muscular talking eel called Paneiraira (Pan for short) who emerges from deep in the Waikato River.
Pan wears a moko and takes it upon himself to educate Titch about her ancestors and the Waikato Wars. He condenses a complex, tragic episode of New Zealand history in an accessible and moving way (for a proficient reader). Titch admits that ‘war stories were not that interesting to me. But Pan had a good way of making them seem real.’
Practical jokes, a family of storytellers and Gregg’s gift for dialogue lighten the book’s tone. A search for buried gold adds tension and illuminates the concept of tapu in everyday life. The Waikato River, Pan’s domain, dominates the landscape: in one memorable scene, Titch’s mum throws a rope around her and shows her how to ride its treacherous currents, never fight them.
Gregg has a great turn of phrase. Titch’s uncle ‘had a laugh like a chest infection’, the tarmac is ‘a bit melty’, the river ‘tasted like a two-cent coin’. While her depiction of Titch is thoughtful and nuanced, other characters tend to be one-dimensional: her annoying younger sister Bub, the school bully, and Titch’s Pākehā dad who is a useful foil for her mum’s progressive views but never interacts with his daughter.
Finally a word about the title: Nine Girls is not a story about nine girls, it’s the first words of a mnemonic that spells out Ngāruawāhia. While this highlights the importance of place for Titch, it would be a shame if it put off potential readers, particularly boys, who will enjoy this engaging tale of a young person exploring who they are and where they come from.
Stacy Gregg grew up in Ngāruawāhia and is internationally regarded for her Pony Club Secrets series.
Nine Girls won the junior fiction category of the 2024 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year.
Take Me To Your Leader
Leonie Agnew
Penguin Random House NZ
If your school was threatened with closure, would the pupils rally around to save it? In the face of a declining roll, would they come up with a madcap scheme – such as visits by aliens – to bring in gawking tourists and revitalise the town? This is what eleven-year-old Lucas sets out to do with the help of his friends, Alex and Harriet. Lucas is a flawed but believable hero who’s full of bright ideas but worries about everything, especially his own and other people’s safety.
Learning his father has died helps the reader understand Lucas’s anxiety and the effect on those around him. Now he lives with his mother who works long hours at a poultry processing plant and his older sister, Ellie, who combines exasperation and bossiness with having his back when it matters. Flocks of sheep, swollen rivers, paddocks and chicken farms create a great rural location for adventurous Kiwi kids. As the story ramps up, there are cunning plans, fake UFOs, dodging authorities, a sinister vehicle with tinted windows.
When Lucas finds the courage to rescue Alex’s little sister from a flooded river, the reader is swept along like the raging current. All the kids are willing to lie for a good cause and get into more trouble than they bargained for. Things don’t work out tidily, but new solutions emerge when adults and children unite.
Agnew’s experience as a primary school teacher comes through in her empathy for young people and familiarity with a school setting. She has a light touch dealing with big topics: death, single parenthood, friendship, anxiety, the demise of rural communities, untrustworthy politicians. Alex turns to playing games on his phone because, he explains, Lucas had gone ‘a bit weird’ on health and safety: ‘I didn’t have anyone to hang out with after school, so I got lonely. I’m not complaining. I mean your dad died, you had bigger problems.’
Take Me To Your Leader is suitable for eight-year-old readers and up. Agnew likes to play on words with catchy chapter titles like ‘My Egg-cellent Plan’ and ‘Operation Fowl-Play’. Detailed instructions on how to make a fake UFO are a nice touch, as are Paul Beavis’s dynamic illustrations. For kids who experience anxiety, those who’ve lost a parent, anyone wanting a heartwarming story about loyal friends with lots of action thrown in, this is a great choice. Leonie Agnew is a primary school teacher and award-winning writer. Take Me To Your Leader was shortlisted for the junior fiction category of the 2024 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
Pip Desmond and Pat Martin are writers and editors who run communications company 2Write. They have been reading books to their three children and eight grandchildren for four decades.