Katerina Te Heikoko Mataira (1932–2011)

Summary: Moon is very upset that she cannot see her reflections in the sea. She begins taking advice from her friend’s cloud, rain, and thunder and lighting. But none of their advice work. She bumps into rainbow. Like the rest of her friends, Rainbow gives the moon advice on how to see her reflection in the sea. Unlike the other friends, Rainbows advice actually works and the moon is able to see her reflection in the sea.

Critique: This is a good book to teach children to never give up. With hard work comes success. It also teaches students to never change their appearance. The reason clouds, rains, and thunder and lightning advice didn't work is because they told the moon to change the way it looked. Which in the end did nothing but make the moon even more sad.

Prompts: Bring a two mirrors. One that is covered and the other uncovered. Have the students look on the covered one and ask them if they change something about themselves will they be able to see their reflections. Then read the book. Once you have read it tell the students what the book is about and show them the mirror that is uncovered. Showing them that they don't have to change who they are.

Craft Element:
Writing- Have the students write about themselves. Telling what makes them different and unique. Then have the students share it with the class.
Reading- Talk about different feelings that people can feel. Use the book to find evidence of different feelings.… (plus d'informations)

A few months ago I levelled up my reading comprehension in Te Reo Māori sufficiently to crack open this young adult science fiction novel I've had sitting on my ereader and my bucket list (it's not available in English). To my delight, I found myself able to follow enough of what was going on - slow going as it was - and levelled up my vocab and understanding of sentence structure even more in the process. I quickly got used to rel="nofollow" target="_top">the author's Ngāti Porou dialect too.

"The Writings of Rehua" is the story of the four teenagers among a colony on a planet of islands. Descendants of survivors of Earth's ecological collapse, the people have strict rules to maintain sustainability. (They didn't all seem very sustainable to me. A child may only be born after someone else dies - this works if deaths are spaced out, but they're not, and waiting for all the kaumatua to die of old age will leave you with an awkward amount of childraising to do all at once at best - a completely post-menopausal society headed for extinction at worst. Likewise, not eating meat in order to avoid hunting animals to extinction sounds fine - but plants can be harvested to extinction just as easily; and the author (later in the novel) having her characters train all the world's animals to stop eating meat too hits a pet peeve. Many animals cannot survive without meat: they can't make the proteins they need otherwise. Do not keep your cat on a vegetarian diet.)

One day, the young people find a couple of abandoned hokio eggs. They look after them and raise the chicks to adulthood - whereupon the birds carry them to another island where other colonists are living in caves, fearing giant lizards but guided by the rest of the hokio. Four more young folk are living there, siblings so eager for new romantic possibilities. Relationships develop over the course of the book but are subordinate to the work (all guided by the telepathic hokio) of taming the giant lizards, meeting two groups of sea people, taming the giant octopodes, and finally returning to Earth.

There isn't much in the way of excitement, even accounting for my pace: rather than plot twists the book gives us an exploration of the world, and a building of the characters' understanding of it and its history - and purpose. But you don't need plot twists when you've got characters flying giant telepathic birds and growing temporary gills for a sortie against giant octopodes!… (plus d'informations)

This is a simple story with an important message about not giving up until you find the right advice to follow to solve your problem. Young children will love the magical images of the moon, rain, and rainbow. The effect of the illustrations and gentle fable is soothing and reassuring. At home, this would make a very nice go-to-bed book.

This would be a wonderful read out loud book because it has little text per page and gorgeous illustrations for children to focus on....children could point out what they notice on each page even before the text is read. This would be a good book for any kind of circle time reading that could lead to a unit on weather and/or celestial bodies. The illustrations would serve as models for children to create their own views of the sun, moon, sea, weather, etc.… (plus d'informations)