Book Ideas: Mother’s Day Campaigns to Watch
Celebrate Mother’s Day
with Penguin Books
For Every Mum There’s a Good Book
Browse Penguin Books NZ selection
COMPETITION: Go in the draw to win FOUR of these titles for you and your mum! Click here to enter. Entries close May 9th, 2021.
with Allen & Unwin NZ
Celebrate Connection this Mother’s Day with a Captivating Book!
Browse Allen & Unwin NZ selection
COMPETITION: For your chance to WIN all six of these books, tells us which title is your #1 pick for Mother’s Day and why. Click here to enter.
with Gecko Press
A Mother Is a House by Aurore Petit
A mother is a nest, a vehicle, a mirror… The baby sees their mother in every aspect of their day. As the pages go by, the child grows. The mother who was a refuge becomes a road, a story and a show. On the final page, the child is ready to take their first steps. Because a mother is a home that you carry inside you forever.
A Mother Is a House looks through the baby’s eyes for an unexpected and affecting picture of parents and home—shown through bright, contemporary illustrations and special inks.
‘This charming tale comes just in time for Mother’s Day’
The Times
Encyclopedia of Grannies by Eric Veillé
An offbeat book full of word play and humour, answering all your questions about grandmas—especially the ones you never thought to ask.
Why do grannies always tell us to speak up? Why do they have creases on their faces? Are grannies flexible? How do you cheer up a sad granny? Exactly how old are grannies anyway?
Eric Veillé explains it all in this witty book for anyone who has, is, knows or will one day be a grandmother.
‘Cleaver, playful…sophisticated silliness’
Guardian
My Mama by Annemarie van Haeringen
A cheeky baby elephant describes his mother while we follow another story in the illustrations—familiar and funny for both parents and children.
I’ve known my mama for such a long time. For my whole life, actually.
My mama loves playing with me and my cars. I like that, as long as mama tidies up the cars afterwards.
I’m good at hiding. No one can find me, not even my mama ... and then suddenly I shout, “PEEKABOO!” My mama’s scared to death! I laugh and laugh.
At night, my mama shakes the stars off my pants. I give her a big hug and say. “Goodnight stars, see you tomorrow!”
‘A two-level story through the eyes of the baby elephant, who has a very wise and good mother’
Julia Marshall, Publisher
with Victoria University Press
Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks
‘I’d wanted to remember why it was we swam in the first place – to remember the pleasure of immersing in an element other than air.’
Ingrid Horrocks had few aspirations to swimming mastery, but she had always loved being in the water. She set out on a solo swimming journey, then abandoned it for a different kind of swimming altogether – one which led her to more deeply examine relationships, our ecological crisis, and responsibilities to collective care. Why do people swim, and where, how, with whom?
Where We Swim ranges from solitary swims in polluted lakes and rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand, to swims in pools in Medellín, Phoenix and the Peruvian Amazon. Near Brighton, Horrocks is joined by an imagined community of early women swimmers; back home she takes her first tentative swim after lockdown. Part memoir, part travel and nature writing, this book is about being a daughter, sister, partner, mother, and above all a human animal living among other animals – sheep and cows, whales and manatee, elks and ibises.
‘Beautiful, surprising, mysterious, deep and reflective’
Hannah Tunnicliffe, Kete
Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
‘The modern world is too much for me. I feel like I’m George of the Jungle.’ —Greta
'At the moment, for personal reasons, I don't like reading things about people being in love with each other.' —Valdin
Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who used to drive around Auckland in a ute but now drives around Buenos Aires in one. Greta is in love with her fellow English tutor Holly, who doesn’t know how to pronounce Greta’s surname, Vladisavljevic, properly.
From their Auckland apartment, brother and sister must navigate the intricate paths of modern romance as well as weather the small storms of their eccentric Māori–Russian–Catalonian family. This beguiling and hilarious novel by Adam Foundation Prize winner Rebecca K Reilly owes as much to Shakespeare as it does to Tinder. Set in a world that is deeply familiar (but also a bit sexier and more stylish than the real one), Greta and Valdin will speak to anyone who has had their heart broken, or has decided that they don’t want to be a physicist anymore, or has wondered about all of the things they don’t know about their family.
