Making Books That Matter and
Surviving as a Writer at the Same Time
Author Luncheon - 18th World Congress of Reading,
Auckland, 12 July, 2000

Most of what I'm going to say is for those in the audience who know nothing or very little about my work. For those of you who do, I hope that you will find something new in what I have to say.

I write and illustrate picture books that are published in New Zealand as well as in other parts of the world.

One of the most exciting current trends for me in international children's literature, is the renewed interest in local and indigenous histories and stories. It seems to be happening in countries where the original cultures have been dominated or controlled by a foreign one at some time, usually in the 19th century. This resurgence in the pride of national identity is happening in lots of countries. I've been aware of it particularly in Canada, parts of Asia, Australia and in New Zealand. An appreciation of cultural diversity and an interest in seeing things from another point of view are triggering some wonderful pieces of writing for children. Pieces of writing that I think matter.

In New Zealand, and certainly in Australia, England as the "mother country" has receded from our consciousness. We are now eagerly revisiting the time of European settlement in the 19th century and looking at it afresh.

This is happening in New Zealand art as well as in literature. A new wave of narrative painters are currently exploring our past, Maori and European.

When I was at school we were given only the British view of the history of New Zealand. The Maori, we were told, were the instigators of most of the troubles. The struggle over land when the British were trying to settle in New Zealand was called "The Maori Wars" fixing the blame fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the Maori.

Things are now slowly changing. I think a lot of New Zealanders are anxious to make a valiant effort to save what we still have in the area of Maori language and traditions before we loose them forever. There is an interest and a renewed pride in things Maori.

Several new histories have been published in recent years, which offer a completely new slant on events that took place during the European settlement of Aotearoa.

The Waitangi Tribunal has been dealing with Maori land grievances dating back to the 19th century and several new schools and kindergartens that emphasise the use of Te Reo Maori, Maori language, have been set up throughout the country.

There are still racial problems to deal with and unfortunately the media makes a feast of these. The recent TV series on the NZ Land Wars stirred up a lot of disbelief and shock amongst some New Zealanders who weren't prepared to have their entrenched views shaken.

The times are interesting and stimulating for writers and artists and there is a huge demand in schools for material to cope with the thrust from the Education Department for wider education in bicultural matters.

And for people like me, and there are thousands of us, who come from a Maori/European background it is an exciting time. Let me explain.

One of the most interesting things about New Zealand is its small population. Everybody knows everybody else or knows someone who does. Thousands of New Zealanders have family stories that connect them to major historical events that have taken place in our country.

I would like to tell you about some of the historical material that I have been using in my work. For me it is emotionally charged too, because it involves my family and my whakapapa.

I'll start in 1843, 3 years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, when a group of British settlers tried to take by force some land near Nelson that belonged to two North Island chiefs, Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata. Te Rangihaeata's wife was killed so he in turn killed all his British prisoners.

An event, which is far more important to me personally, than the Wairau Incident near Nelson, was the birth of my grandfather in the same year. He was born in the Waikato of Tainui descent. He had 11 brothers and sisters. At an early age he was sent to be educated at one of the first Anglican Mission Boarding Schools for Maori at Te Kohanga near the mouth of the Waikato River. The conditions at the school by all accounts were grim - mud floors, poor food, and harsh discipline. The curriculum taught the students about the kings and queens of England as well as the tributaries of the Danube

When my grandfather was 20 in 1863, the tribes of the Waikato formed themselves into a King Movement to protect their land from the British.

Since the early days of English settlement the Waikato tribes had quickly established a lucrative business providing Auckland with fresh meat, grain, fruit and vegetables.

The Pakeha in Auckland wanted to buy the Waikato land but the tribes, lead by their new king, Potatau would not sell. So Governor Grey, Governor of New Zealand, invented an excuse to invade the Waikato. Gunboats, rigged with hot water pipes along the sides to dissuade attackers in canoes from climbing on board, entered the Waikato River in November 1863.

I have no idea what my grandfather or the rest of his family were doing at the time but I know that they were there. A great-aunt of mine lived at Rangiriri, the sight of the first major battle between Grey's troops and the Waikato Maori.

Catherine, another great-aunt, married a Scotsman and fled to live a 1000 miles away in Southland in the South Island.

The Waikato People were driven off their land.

Maori, in other parts of New Zealand also resisted British settlement and there were wars as a result. Eventually, after many years of unrest throughout the North Island, the N.Z. Government set about punishing the Maori by confiscating 142,000 hectares of land (about 300,000 acres) in the Waikato, Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty.

Maori families were cut adrift from the land, which provided physical and spiritual sustenance. As a race the Maori went into a steep decline.

My grandfather was of course forced to leave his tribal homeland in the Waikato. He travelled south to join his sister Catherine in Southland. He eventually married at the sensible age of 46, had 5 children, the youngest of whom was my mother, born when her father was nearly 70.

My mother was fond of telling me stories about her father and aunt from the Waikato. She said that although my grandfather and his sister behaved like Europeans and lived long and happy lives as honorary Scots, they never forgot who they really were. Whenever they got together they spoke only Maori.

These family stories have provided me with the basis of several picture books.

These books deal with issues that matter to me as a New Zealander and therefore I hope they will matter to the young, modern NZ reader as well.

I want these books to give a sense of place and continuum to New Zealand children so they see that this is not a young country that began life when Europeans came here about 200 years. I want them to realise they belong to a country that has a human history at least 1000 years old; a country that had been well and truly explored and named long before Arthur Dudley Dobson discovered Arthur's Pass in the Southern Alps or Captain Cook sailed pass Taranaki and named it Mt Egmont.

Katarina, published by Random Century in 1990, tells the story of my great aunt Catherine and her journey from the Waikato in the North Island to the far south of the South Island. There were no roads so she went by coastal cutter until she got to Bluff near Invercargill. From there she walked along the beach for 2 days, with a baby on her back, to the Scottish settlement of Fortrose where her husband, who had gone before to find work, was waiting for her. This journey took place during the middle of winter. She worked and lived in Fortrose from the time she was 18 until she died at the age of 94.

She had a lot of children of her own and was midwife to countless other mothers and their babies. She was a woman of great strength and faith, greatly loved in the community. When she died her funeral was the biggest that the town had ever seen.

When I visited family in that area after Katarina the book was published in 1990, everyone was still talking of her as if she had died a few months before instead of nearly 60 years ago.

I was immediately attracted to my aunt's story when I heard my mother first tell it. The story of my family's diaspora was something that I grew up with but it was only as an adult that I realised there were probably hundreds of families all over New Zealand that could tell similar stories. It seemed extraordinary that by merely travelling the length of New Zealand it was possible for Katarina to become a foreigner in her own country.

I think it is important that we continue to tell our children today about these stories, as my mother told me.

My great aunt was a wahine toa, or strong woman. And it just so happens that wahine toa feature in the next two books as well.

Hinepau, Scholastic NZ 1993, is the story of a young Maori woman who saves her people from the aftermath of a volcanic eruption.

The name Hinepau is an old name from the East Coast of the North Island. It was my mother's name and her father handed it down to her. It has been in our family for hundreds of years.

It took me a long to write this story because I set out to make it as much like a legend as possible. I've been pleased when people have asked if it was a traditional story from a particular tribal area.

In a similar way to Katarina, the protagonist of this story, a young woman with red hair and green eyes, makes the best of a desperate situation. Hinepau's solution admittedly is fairly drastic. She gives up her life. Whereas Katarina overcomes hardship and loneliness by becoming a valued member of a foreign community, Hinepau clears her name of unjustified accusations of being a witch by using her mauri or life force to rejuvenate the land which has been devastated by a volcanic eruption. Both characters, in their different ways are life giving and archetypal mother figures like Papatuanuku, the earth mother herself.

This strong mother goddess theme also flows through The House That Jack Built, Scholastic 1999.

This book looks at the effects of European settlement on the land and it's people in New Zealand during the early 19th century.

For the text in this book I used the old English nursery rhyme first published in the 18th century. The rhyme has a long history of being parodied. So what I have done to it is nothing new. It seemed to fit some of the events that took place during those early years of European colonisation in this country.

On one of the opening pages Jack arrives in Aotearoa from England with a red door and some goods of trade. He is oblivious to the fact that so much wairua or spirituality, tradition and history of a people that he knows nothing about surround him. He blithely proceeds to cut down some trees without asking permission of Tane Mahuta the forest god and builds himself a house. Nor does he notice that Papatuanuku the earth mother, dominates the scene.

Throughout the rest of the book, Papatuanuku watches as Jack's house grows to become a town, dominating much of that to which the earth mother has given life.

As Jack's world introduces more and more foreign and exotic influences, some good and some bad, Papatuanuku's presence shrinks and wanes.

Only when the Maori are in danger of completely losing their spiritual connection with the land, does Paptuanuku rise up to strike back, like the alarmed mother whose children are in danger. She calls the people of the land to rise up and fight. Waka toa or war canoes appear in the harbour of Jackstown as the farmer sows his corn. British ships are set on fire. War parties rage through the town and Jack's house is burnt to the ground.

The story of Papatuanuku in this book is only one of many stories that are told at the same time. To say what I wanted to say, I didn't let historical fact get in the way. The House That Jack Built is a pseudo history, a fantasy, a retelling of a nursery rhyme but it also looks at some of the important bicultural issues that we as a nation are still trying to work through to this day.

So far this book has only been seen in New Zealand and I must say it has enjoyed much acclaim, but I think that there are other countries where this book could find a welcome. The North American Indian and the Australian Aborigine would recognize the stories that my House That Jack Built tells.

Now, writing books that I feel passionate about is all very well. Much of the subject matter as you have heard, is of a very specific nature and will not necessarily export well to another country. So to survive financially, a children's writer in a country as small as New Zealand, needs to publish globally.

To do this, one needs to be aware of the specific market demands in different parts of the world. American publishers for example, tend to want quite different material to that of the average New Zealand publisher.

I have an agent/editor in Washington who helps me to produce stories and pictures that have an American "voice". This is not a selling out of my individuality. The essential integrity of the work remains intact. The changes I make are mainly to do with details of spelling, idiom and sometimes pace. But the targeted audience often determines the subject matter.

In my so-called "New Zealand Books" I enjoy including references to New Zealand things that NZ kids will recognise and relate to. But I know that these details would be lost on most American readers.

From my observation, the American market seems to be a conservative one. Picture books on the whole seem to be regarded as literature for young children who don't yet read well. I may be wrong, but a lot of American picture books have an air of innocence and sweetness. They project a quality of childhood that I suspect few American children experience and sometimes they display a nostalgia for a past that probably exists only in Hollywood movies.

The large market in America though, is very attractive for a writer who lives in a country of 3 1/2 million people and I try to have as many books as possible published there. However there is a price to pay. Distribution of these books back in New Zealand is a problem. A picture book published in America, but written and illustrated by a New Zealander, is treated as a foreign title in New Zealand. Because of the strong American dollar the book is expensive to buy in and therefore the NZ publisher/distributor is reluctant to spend money on its promotion.

Writing reading books is another way of ensuring a good and reliable source of income. I am sure you know that New Zealand is a world leader in the publication of reading recovery programmes and graded reading material.

As a full-time children's writer I welcome the potential income from this sort of work. These little books sell in the millions and have a long life of anything up to 11 or 12 years, sometimes longer.

However it is trade picture books that interest me most.

My latest American trade book, Stay Awake, Bear! was published earlier this year by Orchard Books in New York with an initial print run of 25,000. The same book, if published in NZ, would have had a print run of about 3 to 4,000.

To finish on a light note today I would like to read Stay Awake, Bear! to you.