As children, Logan’s grandfather and his sister Mavis spotted a beautiful and unusual bird in the kowhai tree outside their house: it was a huia, which was believed to be extinct. In an attempt to photograph it they tracked it deep into the Manawatu Gorge. This was a dangerous journey, made even more so when the Carson boys got wind of their mission and decided to try and find the bird first so they could shoot it and sell its highly valuable feathers. More than 60 years later, 11-year-old Logan has returned to the Manawatu with Grandpop and a scientist to try to solve the mystery of what happened to the huia all those years ago. Can the group rely on Grandpop’s version of events, and find the huia’s final resting place? Will the huia still be there, and will its DNA still be valuable for scientific research into NZ’s native fauna? Not if the Carsons have anything to do with it …

As restless, reckless, and precise as the Colt revolver for which it is named, Robyn Schiff’s Revolver “repeats fire without reloading” as it reckons with the array of foreboding objects displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the traces of their ghosts one hundred years later. A dirge on the Singer Sewing Machine, an exuberant and unnerving rumination on multipurpose campaign furniture, and a breathless account of Ralph Lauren’s silver Porsche 550 Spyder are among the collection’s exhilarating corporate histories, urgent fantasias, and agonizing love poems. The long, lavish, and utterly unpredictable sentences that Schiff has assembled contort as much to discover what can’t be contained as what can. This is a book of extremes relentlessly contemporary in scope. And like the eighty-blade sportsman’s knife also described here, Revolver keeps opening and reopening to the daunting possibilities of transformation—“Splayed it is a bouquet of all the ways a point mutates.” from “Silverware by J. A. Henckels” Let me be as streamlined as my knife when I say this. As cold as my three-pronged fork that cools the meat even as it steadies it. A pettiness in me was honed in this cutlers’ town, later bombed, in which Adolf Eichmann, who was born there alongside my wedding pattern, could hear the constant sharpening of knives like some children hear the corn in their hometowns talking to them through the wind. The horizon is just the score they breathe through like a box of chickens breathing through a slit.

In a large valley lies a geographical feature known as Jelly Mountain. It’s called that because of its shape – rather like a jelly having been popped out of its mould. Its straight sides mean the top has never been explored and there are many rumours about strange creatures inhabiting it. Efforts to explore have met with disaster – and this has only made the mystery and fear stronger. Then a light plane crash-lands after buzzing suspiciously around the top of Jelly Mountain … and twins Jason and Jessy become embroiled in a mystery that is not without danger and which is set to rock the whole world. And what does it have to do with the old journal they found hidden in the wall of the old house on the farm? Formerly titled The Secret of Jelly Mountain (2009).

New Zealand has been one of the world's heaviest users of pesticides, including some contaminated with dioxin, a notorious toxic chemical. In this BWB Text a leading epidemiologist uses the example of dioxin to illustrate how badly New Zealand handles problems of environmental pollutants, and why we can do better. Concern with public health has been recast by the Covid-19 pandemic. Neil Pearce's eye-opening account of our country's ongoing failures in environmental protection shows there is much more work to be done.

New Zealand is one of the least crowded countries in the world and is Australia’s closest neighbour. Find out what life is like in New Zealand. Discover New Zealand’s ethnic diversity and how people live, work and play. Meet some of the New Zealand’s most notable people and the events that shaped this fascinating country. Learn all about New Zealand including: - Government - History - Ethnic diversity - Landscape and climate - Religions and festivals - Cultural traditions - Transport systems - The arts - Languages - Cuisine And find out more about New Zealand’s relationship with Australia. ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN NEIGHBOURS SERIES This exciting series explores the landscapes, culture and people of Australia’s closest neighbours. Inside each book you’ll find current information, maps, statistics, fun facts, timelines and photographs. Every book is a valuable resource designed to support Australian students and teachers, and meet Australian National Curriculum requirements.

The Pacific Islands are thousands of islands, and represent numerous diverse cultures and languages. Find out what life is like in various Pacific Island nations. Discover the ethnic diversity, and how people live, work and play. What is the difference between Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia? Learn about the governments, history, culture and landscapes of countries like: - Fiji - Vanuatu - Nauru - Tonga - New Caledonia And find out more about Australia’s relationship with its Pacific Island neighbours. ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN NEIGHBOURS SERIES This exciting series explores the landscapes, culture and people of Australia’s closest neighbours. Inside each book you’ll find current information, maps, statistics, fun facts, timelines and photographs. Every book is a valuable resource designed to support Australian students and teachers, and meet Australian National Curriculum requirements.

Striding Both Worlds illuminates European influences in the fiction of Witi Ihimaera, Aotearoa New Zealand’s foremost Māori writer, in order to question the common interpretation of Māori writing as displaying a distinctive Māori world-view and literary style. Far from being discrete endogenous units, all cultures and literatures arise out of constant interaction, engagement, and even friction. Thus, Māori culture since the 1970s has been shaped by a long history of interaction with colonial British, Pakeha, and other postcolonial and indigenous cultures. Māori sovereignty and renaissance movements have harnessed the structures of European modernity, nation-building, and, more recently, Western global capitalism, transculturation, and diaspora – contexts which contest New Zealand bicultural identity, encouraging Māori to express their difference and self-sufficiency. Ihimaera’s fiction has been largely viewed as embodying the specific values of Māori renaissance and biculturalism. However, Ihimaera, in his techniques, modes, and themes, is indebted to a wider range of literary influences than national literary critique accounts for. In taking an international literary perspective, this book draws critical attention to little-known or disregarded aspects such as Ihimaera’s love of opera, the extravagance of his baroque lyricism, his exploration of fantasy, and his increasing interest in taking Māori into the global arena. In revealing a broad range of cultural and aesthetic influences and inter-references commonly seen as irrelevant to contemporary Māori literature, Striding Both Worlds argues for a hitherto frequently overlooked and undervalued depth and complexity to Ihimaera’s imaginary. The present study argues that an emphasis on difference tends to lose sight of fiction’s capacity to appreciate originality and individuality in the polyphony of its very form and function. In effect, literary negotiation of Māori sovereign space takes place in its forms rather than in its content: the uniqueness of Māori literature is found in the way it uses the common tools of literary fiction, including language, imagery, the text’s relationship to reality, and the function of characterization. By interpeting aspects of Ihimaera’s oeuvre for what they share with other literatures in English, Striding Both Worlds aims to present an additional, complementary approach to Māori, New Zealand, and postcolonial literary analysis.