Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider (1987) Harcourt Inc, 2003 The Whale Rider is set on the East Coast of New Zealand, and that is, indeed, where Paikea is the tipuna ancestor, but this is a novel, not a narrative of myth and culture. It is a story of one fictional
Juan Ramón Jiménez's Platero and I (1914) Trans. Eloïse Roach University of Texas Press, 1957 When I saw that Platero and I was listed in both 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up and 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, I thought I must really have been missing something
Sara Gruen's Ape House Bond Street Books, 2010 Reasons I read Water for Elephants: 1. I got tired of saying "No, I haven't, yet", when countless people -- with all kinds of reading prefereces between them -- asked me if I'd read it. 2. I love elephants (and books about
Dick King-Smith's The School Mouse Illus. Cynthia Fisher Hyperion, 1995 The School Mouse is one of the books chosen by Shireen Dodson in her book 100 Books for Girls to Grow On, a list that I've been pulling from since 2008. It seemed the perfect choice for September: Back-to-School. And that's just what
Kenneth Oppel's Silverwing Harper Collins, 1997 This read is the one that most excited me when I selected it for the Once Upon a Time Challenge; it's been sitting on my shelves for more than ten years. Sure, I've been to the Royal Ontario Museum's Bat Cave a handful of
