NEW RELEASES
Warblish, Chirpish, Ticktocklish, & Animalopoeia
Helen Mae Innes
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There is a little-known practice of interpreting the sounds of birds, insects, animals, and inanimate objects as intelligible, yet onomatopoeic words. Common examples include the Yellowhammer's song being rendered as, 'A little bit of bread and no cheese, please,' and the Bushcricket saying, 'Katy did, Katy didn't'.
Despite being widespread across languages and cultures, so-called birdsong mnemonics have rarely been explored and never in this depth. This ground-breaking book covers the sound imitations by bringing together over 1500 examples from 62 languages. It examines what these imitations have in common and argues for the use of new terminology and classification of these examples. The book stems from Helen Mae Innes' research into the topic for her PhD dissertation but has been written in understandable language and is suitable for researchers, both amateur and professional, curious about this quirky, yet engaging topic. |
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Learning is Like Riding a Bicycle
Philip Martin
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A delightful short tale on how learning new things is much like riding a bike.
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Wheels
Madden Hay
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Kids who love all things to do with bicycles will love this fun rhyming story about wheels. Great for adults and children to read together or for early readers. Includes topics of building resilience, counting, and noticing similarities that can be expanded upon in conversation. The dyslexia-friendly font makes the story accessible to all readers.
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The Henhouse
Philip Martin
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A charming story about Andrew and his hens. He needs to put them in the henhouse each night, but Andrew soon grows bored of doing that and pops them in a different room each day of the week. He puts them in the laundry, kitchen, playroom. Where else will he put them?
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An Unlikely Academic
Jerry Mushin
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Many of us think we know how universities function but, in An Unlikely Academic, a retired lecturer describes what really happens (or what happened to him). He explains recurring themes in the life of academic institutions and shows how these have evolved since he was a student in the 1960s. This is not merely an entertaining romp through academic life, it is also a thought‑provoking read. |
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COMING SOON
Tatami Burns
Madden Hay
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Lynley finds herself unexpectedly alone in Japan after her girlfriend cancels her teaching contract at the last minute. They’ll have a long-distance relationship and meet up again in a year to travel together. Or will they? Loneliness and anxiety threaten to overwhelm Lynley, but luckily another expat is living nearby – a flamboyant, fun-loving, but often obnoxious fag who she can at least hang out with. A story about young expats behaving badly, discovering and questioning themselves, each other, and the world. A touching, funny story about figuring out and challenging the rules of groups, both large and small, of relationships, and of boundaries. |
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BACK CATALOGUE
Learn by Mosaic
Affie Blake
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Lil is a failure. A fait accompli of failure. She has failed in family, relationships, fashion, style, and employment. If failure were a skill, she would be a triumph. But it isn't, and she isn't - she's just a failure. Her dream of art and the artist's life has diminished and her hope of eternal love, romance and a perfect relationship has faded. Now in her late thirties, with, she feels, no marketable skills or discernable talents, teaching English is all she has. She could give an artist's impression of a good job but couldn't get one if her life depended upon it, and now she's beginning to feel it may well do. She can't understand how she's a supporting actor in the movie of her own life and needs to do something with her life before life does something to her. A light-hearted novel with bite Learn by Mosaic is a relatable read which will resonate and stay with the reader long after they have finished the final page. |
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Not Swinging, Swooning
Stevan Eldred-Grigg
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‘It’s early in the morning,’ a boy writes in his diary, ‘on the first day of the first year of the most modern decade in the whole of human history. Get in the groove! Already the world is so cool. And it’s going to get cooler and cooler. Forever!’The seven-year-old boy, one of many middle children in a nuclear family, lives in a twice-mortgaged new bungalow in a new cul-de-sac in a suburb during the Space Age. ‘We’ve got our bloody dream home,’ jokes his mother. ‘And we have to skive our guts out to bloody pay for it.’ Not Swinging, Swooning is the story of the boyhood years of Stevan Eldred-Grigg, told by himself. A story about a boy’s dreams, dreads, hopes, fears and adventures. A story about elbowing and being elbowed by five brothers, three sisters, Seven Sisters, many aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbours, friends, teachers, foes, heroes. A story about teleshows goggled by the boy. And about pop songs he thought were groovy. And about yarns spelled by the olds. Along with other tales he was told, or told himself, about being a boy – being in a suburb – and about becoming, or trying to become, a young man in the mod optimistic hi-gloss world of the sixties of last century. It’s hip. I dig it. Far out. |
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And the Birds Fled to the Bush
Helen Mae Innes
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The leaves of the books are birds. The tightly scrunched ponytails of the girls are birds. The dreadlocks of their pothead boyfriends are birds. The doilies on the windowsills are birds. The Dominion Post held by an old man becomes a flock of birds and starts to fly away. The prescriptions for the sickness beneficiaries are birds caught in the down draft. The white paper bags that held raspberry cream donuts are birds. The receipts for reconditioned tyres are birds. The posters for a d-dub concert are birds. The Jackson’s Café and Burger Bar wrappers, the Dolla $ave plastic bags, the Wainuiohine Library Teen-Zone fliers are birds. The valley’s calm, quiet, waiting. Mrs Henderson thinks it’s earthquake weather but she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to make a fuss. It’s probably nothing. No one else notices it’s quiet, too quiet, until everyone does at the same moment, like at a party when everything goes silent and no one wants to be the first to speak. All the birds take flight at the sound of Mike’s motorbike backfiring. They lift, for a moment, suspended. Everyone turns and stares. Will they fly? Will they soar? Will they scatter? Like confetti? Like polystyrene beans from a burst beanbag? Or will they all move together as one? A rising, folding, sweeping, blossoming, murmuration? All the birds are airborne, and the whole valley holds its breath. |
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Into the Woods
Helen Mae Innes
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'A funny, painful, powerful story about the strange ways grief moves through us. Helen's path of recovery, from a bed she doesn't want to leave towards a natural world she doesn't know, is full of recognisable difficulties and unlikely connections. This frank and bracing little book has a bass note of personal tragedy but a top note of surprising joy.' Damien Wilkins It was during the spring the kaka arrived that I first noticed a grey warbler fledgling outside my window who couldn't get the tune quite right. He'd start singing, get a note wrong and falter, then try tentatively again. Like a child learning the recorder, I thought. Like a child... |
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Harpoon
Hugh Hunter
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People, place and plot leap to life in this riveting counterfactual thriller set in a war’s end New Zealand East Coast c1945. Hugh Hunter exploits to the full the contrast between the sunbaked somnolent township of Harpoon and an unthinkable-until-it-happened assault landing by an undercover German detachment on a mystery mission. Ranick, Klaske, Tripp, Bluey Totoro, the Weatherby sisters and a host of other characters, German, Pākehā and Māori, lodge in the reader’s mind long after the last page is turned. The assault climaxes with guns blazing and scores settled in a scene worthy of the best thriller writers. Malcolm McKinnon |
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The Unused Life of Tito López
Luis Luna
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A clever, hopeful, young graduate, Tito López, is poised at the entry to adulthood as well as a whole new millennium. Living in a provincial Mexican city at the turn of the 21st century he wants what most of us want … a career, love, happiness. But will he find any of them on Cerro del Calvario? What’s up with his nunnish clever sister Angelita? Will the deer’s eye work – the amulet given by the wrinkled family workhorse, María? Who’s the mysterious blond god, Salvador? The Unused Life of Tito López portrays the Lopez family in a way that will seem familiar to those from middle-class suburban families almost anywhere else in the world. Meanwhile, readers from outside Mexico will be intrigued by the sense of other, parallel, exotic, existences in our contemporary world. |
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Making Math Add Up
Maggie Tu
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Maggie's philosophy is Make Maths Not Suck! And she has succeeded with this colourful, fun, clear, and mathematically sound approach to teaching mathematics.
Instead of teaching fragments of topics artificially divided by the age of the learner Maggie has started at the beginning for each topic and systematically gone through each stage, thereby showing that what is taught over subsequent years in the schooling system can be taught quickly, easily and pain free using this system. Maggie's book is ideal for both the student who has (allegedly) "fallen behind" and those who are excelling and are "ahead" for their year, i.e. all levels can pick up this book, find the stage at which they feel comfortable and start working from there. Students can start at the beginning of each chapter and do the easier exercises quickly as revision or jump straight to the difficult questions. This book encourages independent learning and has been peer-reviewed by teachers and students alike. The specialist font makes this resource accessible to all learners. Maggie's book is, we believe, the only maths book which is printed in a dyslexia-friendly font. This font's features include such things as being weighted at the bottom and each letter is unique to prevent flipping (i.e., of p, b, d, q); the zero and letter "O" are different, as are the number 1 and the lower-case l (L) and uppercase I to avoid confusion; regular spacing between letters and left alignment, etc. All of these help al readers, but especially those with dyslexia.
This maths book is also available in the larger A4 size to help those children who require larger text sizes to read or enjoy holding larger book size. |
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Oracles & Miracles & Zombies
Stevan Eldred-Grigg & Helen Mae Innes
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The time between the two World Wars was dominated by poverty and pandemic. The virus which surfaced in 1918 turned the infected into biters and hunches, and the later 'cure' turned biters into lurkers. But who is the most dangerous?
Biters: Biters have been infected by a virus and want to eat your brains. They don't talk much but they'll eat your ear off. Hunches: Hunches have been infected but don't chase you down the street. They're slow and hunched over but mostly harmless. Just keep them fed. Lurkers: The government discovered a 'cure' which turns biters into lurkers. Lurkers are passive, quiet, and a cheap source of labour. Uninfected: There's not much life in the biters but it's not much of a life for the uninfected either. They still have to find money for food, for rent, for barbed wire fences, and for sharp knives. Oracles & Miracles & Zombies e-book |
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Green Grey Rain
Stevan Eldred-Grigg
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n on iron rooftops. A radio streaming the latest hit songs. It's the early 1950s. The baby boom. Valarie is a talkative, singing, slanging, pregnant daughter of the slums. Gilbert, her husband, is a well-spoken son of a landed family. They already have three kids. Gilbert has just taken a job as paymaster at a coal mine. The family is about to start life in a green and black and red township on the West Coast.
A little boy is born, almost in a taxi, and named Stevan. green Grey rain tells the story of the first years of a little boy dreaming and singing, wondering and wishing, in the bush, rain, rust and sooty streets of 1950s Blackball. A story told by the boy. A story told too by the hit songs he hears on the radio. And a story told by his mother - someone who, with her sister, has already spoken to us in the pages of Oracles and Miracles. Green Grey Rain e-book
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My Dad
Anneke Gerbrands & Ingrid Kamp
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My dad is a beautifully illustrated simple story about a kid and their dad. Its short, simple sentences and use of dyslexia friendly font make it suitable for young readers, but its full page colourful illustrations also make it attractive to toddlers.
My Dad is written by Anneke Gerbrands and uses New Zealand English making it ideal for dads and kids to read together. Each full page vibrant illustration was lovingly hand drawn by artist Ingrid Kamp. Parents, libraries, & schools: For free activities (colouring, drawing, writing) please click on the button below. |
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Pru Goes Troppo
Stevan Eldred-Grigg
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Pru has been married to Guy for a quarter of a century. She hasn’t had sex for ten years. ‘Why the hell do I live my life this way?’ she says to herself. ‘I mean – really!’ Change comes from out of the blue when odd old Uncle Bertie dies in Samoa and leaves his property to Guy. On a whim, the couple decide to go and take a look at what they know must be a tropical paradise. Not their usual stamping ground, you understand. Daringly, they fly to Apia. Pru soon finds herself thinking things, feeling things, doing things she’s never till now come close to thinking, feeling, doing.
‘Are we just an ornamental waste of space, d’you think?’ she asks Guy in Samoa. ‘I rather think we are, darling.’ ‘Oh dear.’ Pru Goes Troppo is a comic novel about the ups and downs of two people who are privileged parasites, yet curiously innocent. Among the themes explored in the story are class, gender, colonialism and neo-colonialism, ageing and belonging. And pratfalls. Pru Goes Troppo e-book
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