Books from New Zealand
101 popular new zealand books
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world.
All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around Oceania Challenge" were written by authors from New Zealand.
Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.
32.
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy by Lynley Dodd EN
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy is the hilarious rhyming classic by Lynley Dodd.Hairy Maclary goes off for a walk in town, followed by doggish friends of all shapes and sizes. One by one they join Hairy Maclary until they meet SCARFACE CLAW! Scarface Claw is the toughest Tom in town, and causes all the others to run for home. The brilliant cumulative rhyme and terrific pictures of this story has turned it into a classic - and it is still one of the most popular picture books today.Lynley Dodd is an award-winning author/illustrator who lives in New Zealand. She is enormously popular for he... continue
33.
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir EN
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to the sensational, USA Today best-selling novel Gideon the Ninth, turns a galaxy inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor's haunted space station. “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!” —Charles Stross on Gideon the Ninth “Unlike anything I've ever read.” —V.E. Schwab on Gideon the Ninth “Deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original.” —The New York Times on Gideon the Ninth She answered the Emperor... continue
34.
How to Bee by Bren MacDibble EN
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
A story about family, loyalty, kindness and bravery, set against an all-too-possible future where climate change has forever changed the way we live. In a world where real bees are extinct, the quickest, bravest kids climb the fruit trees and pollinate the flowers by hand. Peony lives with her sister, Magnolia, and her grandfather on a fruit farm outside the city. All Peony really wants is to be a bee. Even though she is only nine — and bees must be ten — Peony already knows all there is to know about being a bee and she is determined to achieve her dream. Life on the farm is a scrabble, but t... continue
35.
In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield EN
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
Recovering from a miscarriage and a bad marriage, author Katherine Mansfield, barely 21, wrote these excellent short stories around the time she was staying in a spa town in Germany. With wry humour, she depicts a German upper middle class defined by their rude habits, but she also touches upon the hard life of servants and the oppression of women. The latter distinguishes her writing from that of Jane Austen, but the way in which Mansfield mocks the stiff-upper-lipped ladies and Barons of these stories and zeroes in on character quirks is particularly Jane Austen-like, and just as satisfying ... continue
36.
Island of the Lost : An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett EN
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
“Riveting.” —The New York Times Book Review Hundreds of miles from civilization, two ships wreck on opposite ends of the same deserted island in this true story of human nature at its best—and at its worst. It is 1864, and Captain Thomas Musgrave’s schooner, the Grafton, has just wrecked on Auckland Island, a forbidding piece of land 285 miles south of New Zealand. Battered by year-round freezing rain and constant winds, it is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death. Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island, another... continue
38.
Kāwai: for Such a Time As This by Monty Souter EN
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
''This epic historical adventure tells the story of pre-colonial Aotearoa New Zealand like it's never been told before. A young Maori man, compelled to learn the stories of his ancestors, returns to his family marae on the east coast of the North Island to speak to his elderly grand-uncle, the keeper of the stories. What follows is the enthralling account of the young man's tipuna, the legendary warrior Kaitanga, after whom his marae's whare puni has been named. Tracing the author's own ancestral line, Kawai: For Such a Time as This reveals a picture of an indigenous Aotearoa in the mid-18th c... continue
39.
Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka EN
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
"In the void of time, Kurangaituku, the bird-woman, tells the story of her extraordinary Life - the birds who first sang her into being, the arrival of the Song Makers and the change they brought to her world, her life with the young man Hatupatu, and her death. But death does not end a creature of imagination like Kurangaituku. In the underworlds of Rarohenga, she continues to live in the many stories she collects as she pursues what eluded her in life. This is a story of love - but is this love something that creates or destroys? Kurangaituku is a contemporary retelling of the story of Hatup... continue
40.
La leyenda de las ballenas by Witi Ihimaera ES
Country: Oceania / New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
Los maoríes afirman que sus antepasados llegaron a Nueva Zelanda en canoas. Las gentes de Whangara y de la Costa Este creen que su antepasado Paikea lo hizo en el lomo de una ballena que le había rescatado tras volcar su canoa. Desde entonces, generación tras generación, cada hijo varón de aquella estirpe está llamado a gobernar a la gente del poblado con el arrojo y la sabiduría de su héroe, Paikea. La Leyenda de las ballenas es la historia de la última descendiente de la estirpe, una niña llamada Kahu, que a sus ocho años se enfrenta, con la complicidad de las ballenas como único aliado, a u... continue