Munkle Arvur and the Big Dry by Nikki Slade Robinson (Scholastic NZ, $20)

Reviewed by Linda Dawley

The cover of this book, as much as the title, tells us about the subject matter. A fish, standing on its tail collecting drops of water beside a sign, ‘water is precious!’ alerts us to trouble within. Nikki Slade Robinson, with her innate sense of colour and magical drawings has created a vehicle to deliver a message of conservation. The perils of waste and dirty water are illustrated in a humorous way with comical characters but the underlying message is clear—’no life can survive; without water we die!’

Munkle Arvur comes to the rescue when ‘the Bod’ came creeping in the night to steal the town’s water supply. There is no bathwater, no frogs croak, and vege gardens sprout ‘limpulous leeks’.  Munkle Arvur mounts his bike, tracks down the culprit and restores the water supply. Fish can swim, plants thrive and the dam was turned into a holiday spot so the water and space were not wasted. Everyone can enjoy the water and natural resources.

The disaster caused by the loss of the town’s water is tempered by the actions of Munkle Arvur as he tracks down the greedy selfish bod and literally pulls the plug on him—so his butt is stuck in the hole in the ground.

This delightful romp through Tikaroo town demonstrates the importance of water that is ‘gooder than good’ and loved by all.

I loved the colour, flow and characters in this book. The humour will appeal to children and adults. A lasting message of conservation is delivered in an easy, fun manner.

Kids’ Meals & Snacks by Emma Donnelly (New Holland, $24.99)

Reviewed by Sophie Robinson, 12

When I opened the parcel I couldn’t wait to look inside the appealing cover. This book looks quite grown-up, so kids might like it even more than a normal ‘kids’ cookbook that looks more childish. I like the colour theme (pale purple). It is a hardcover with a cloth spine and thick pages. It’s a good size and has an embossed title.

This clearly set out book will get used for sure! Each recipe is on a double page spread, with the recipe on one page and on the facing page there is a full colour, full page photo. The title is at the top, then there is the quantity that the recipe makes. A clear list of ingredients and amounts is underneath. Another helpful thing with the ingredients is that they are listed in the order that you need to use them. It would be good to have the preparation time and cooking time at the start as well though. The steps are clear and easy to read, and are not too long. The only instruction that I didn’t understand was where it said to infuse sugar with a vanilla bean but doesn’t say how to actually do that.

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Book television, aka The Book Show, is coming to Aotearoa New Zealand, on screen at FaceTV, now on the Sky platform, as well as online.

Carole Beu and Graham Beattie in a promo video for their upcoming show.

Carole Beu of The Women’s Bookshop in Auckland, Graham Beattie of The Book Blog and producer Deb Faith of FaceTV have raised enough money via crowd funding at Boosted – just under $7,000 so far – for 12 episodes, which begin production in September, and will be on screen later that month. The Book Show will feature “author interviews, reviews and great reads from both NZ contributors and visiting international book people.”

Faith says the show will screen at prime time (no day set yet), with a daytime repeat. It will also be available online at FaceTV’s YouTube channel, Beattie’s blog and Carol Beu’s bookstore website.

Book lovers may remember Lindsey Dawson’s show Let’s Talk, that featured books and authors, among other things, and ran on FaceTV for two years, ending with last year’s digital switchover.

Dawson told Scoop Review of Books that the show had NZ On Air support, but that ended because funding can only cover shows on free-to-air platforms, and since the switchover, FaceTV has only been available on Sky, which requires a paid subscription. The show was something of a labour of love for Dawson, who said the pay barely covered petrol to get the studio.

“I do miss it, as I met some great creative and gifted people, and it kept me up with the play on various fronts.”

Dawson says she’ll still do the occasional interview for the show “if authors pop up in whom I’m really interested or have a previous link with”.

“It would be great if there was a well-resourced local book show on free-to-air TV, but mainstream TV is simply not interested,” Dawson said. “For them it’s all about how much advertising they can sell around shows, or how much corporate sponsorship is available, and with books/arts/ culture in general, that is thin on the ground in NZ.”

“However, Carole Beu and Graham Beattie will be great on the new show at presenting the best of what’s on offer in print, given Carole’s long history in book selling and Graham’s prominence as an all-round publishing expert,” she said.

- by Alison McCulloch

20th Century Classic Cars by Jim Heimann and Phil Patton (Taschen/distributed by New Holland, $39.99)

Reviewed by Jim Robinson

Since I became a copywriter in 1989, I’ve spent untold hours poring over ‘best of’ advertising collections. Annuals like D&AD (Design and Art Direction), and campaign reviews like the stunning Well-written and red (Economist newspaper) are glorious things indeed for anyone who appreciates that advertising can be creatively brilliant, as well as selling stuff.

So, while I’m no car enthusiast, I’ve had a good deal of pleasure reading 20th Century Classic Cars, by Jim Heimann (editor) and Phil Patton (author). Across a hefty 500+ glossy pages, the book shows car print ads from the early-1900s to the end of the millennium.

There’s a wealth of US vehicular sales creativity here, from Republic tyres (‘No Skid to Dread, with Staggard Tread’) to Lincoln (‘Look out for those clouds!’); from Oldsmobile (‘Hydra-Matic Drive!’) to Plymouth (‘SOLID BEAUTY’); from Renault (‘Le Fun Car’) to Pontiac (‘YOUR TIME HAS COME’); from Mercedes-Benz (Coupe d’Etat’) to Rolls-Royce (‘The heart and soul of a masterpiece’).

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The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (Bloomsbury, $37)

Reviewed by John Lang

Very few of us ever feel compelled to really comprehend geological deep time. Why should we? In a few thousand years, a blink in the cosmos, we will be long decomposed and molecularly scattered. Earth will be here, but we won’t.

With The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Bloomsbury), Elizabeth Kolbert joins the ranks of authors Bill Bryson, Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson (who also presents the TV documentary series “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”) who understand the merits of appreciating deep time. And as authors, they can expertly communicate that to us, or at least try. Their main weapon of choice: analogy, one of the few techniques that can reveal to us what is otherwise invisible.

In The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert uses a different but equally powerful technique. She begins by asking us to imagine a new species that emerged around 200,000 years ago faced with what you’d expect one to encounter: hostility, competition and above all, a necessity to adapt. Soon this species – thanks to a few unique traits such as intelligence, curiosity, language and co-operative behavior – manages to reproduce and spread itself expediently across the earth’s surface. Its members even find ways to cross oceans without having to evolve back into amphibians. Eventually, this resourceful biped manages to transform 70 per cent of the planet’s surface, extract its subterranean energy reserves, and enslave or extinguish many of Earth’s other occupants for its own benefit.
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The Improbability Principle: Why incredibly unlikely things keep happening by David Hand (Bantam Press, $39.89)

Reviewed by C P Howe

Who hasn’t heard a relative, a colleague, or a journalist comment on an unlikely event? Perhaps someone wins the lottery two weeks in a row. Or the financial markets crash twice in ten years. Or – in the case of my parents – they see a car with their initials on the number plate. Isn’t that incredible! What a co-incidence!

These are the kinds of things David Hand takes a close look at in The Improbability Principle and he does a great job for the general reader. Although some of the maths will be a stretch – and some almost inaccessible – to non-mathematicians, it doesn’t distract from the story he’s telling.

It turns out that his Improbability Principle is ‘not a single equation, but a collection of strands’ and Hand walks us through them – he calls them ‘laws’ – together with other material about probability and chance.
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1001 BIKES TO DREAM OF RIDING BEFORE YOU DIE

Guy Kesteven, General Editor, New Holland, $40

Review by Jim Robinson

A good few of the bikes in 1001 bikes to dream of riding before you die, I’m actually perfectly happy if I never ride. But that’s a complement to editor Guy Kesteven rather than a complaint. A book filled with razor-tuned race machines would have quickly tired, whereas this one, with bikes all the way out to Pee-wee Herman’s beach cruiser, is way more fun.

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Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey (Penguin, $37)

Reviewed by Ruth Brassington

We all make cups of tea we forget to drink. We all make lists. We even forget to take them with us to the shops. Maud’s lists are a bit different, but, like the rest of us, she remembers some things and not others. Not everyone is where they should be and things are not all as they seem, particularly for Maud, whose memory plays tricks on her – and on the reader.
Here she is, the main character and voice, in the present. Then again, she steps into the past to replay old scenes that may or may not connect to the here and now. The mysteries, both past and present, seem to be linked in Maud’s mind. Her ageing processes are sensitively shown through her thoughts and actions – and she’s very, very active. She’s the Miss Marple of her own mysteries and like that ageing woman, she won’t let sleeping dogs lie.
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Sculptor’s Daughter: A Childhood Memoir translated by Kingsley Hart, introduced by Ali Smith (Sort Of Books)

Review by Ruth Brassington

I haven’t been to Finland, but my grandfather was born there to a Finnish father and a Swedish mother, the same mix as Tove Jansson. I’d heard stories of long dark indoor winters and going to school on skis but I hadn’t heard of Moomintrolls (the little white troll of Jansson’s Moomin books). Not surprising, as my grandfather was born in 1870 whereas Jansson was born in 1914.

A century after Jansson’s birth, this now-translated memoir will bring her life after death by increasing the readership of her adult writings. My joyful introduction to Jansson’s writing was The Summer Book, published in 1972. Sculptor’s Daughter, too, gets across the essence of a child’s day-to-day life with few companions. The child Tove’s naïve voice seems charged with ancient wisdom and understanding, showing an early intrigue with words in the same way as did Janet Frame: “Inexorable. Ornamentation. Profile. Catastrophic. Electrical. District Nurse. They get bigger and bigger if you say them over and over again. You whisper and whisper and let the word grow until nothing exists except the word”.
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Great Walks of New Zealand Maps (Craig Potton Publishing, $24.99)

Review by Nikki Slade Robinson

I have a confession: I really like maps. I like how you can pore over one and build up a 3D mental image of an area by interpreting contour lines and other geographical information. I particularly like the ‘Topo’ (Topographical) maps that have been around for years; the maps that have been carted around by keen outdoors-people for so long. The maps printed on paper. So when I heard about this new series of maps of NZ’s nine Great Walks printed on ‘waterproof durable paper’, I was keen to see what they were like.
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