Karl's Reading List

Published by Allen & Unwin: Auckland, New Zealand, 2019. Text by Sina Meredith. Illustrations by Mat Tait. The second book I read cover to cover during my research for a Year 10 module, The Adventures of Tupaia tells the story of Captain Cook's Tahitian navigator and translator, Tupaia, as well as Tupaia's young assistant Taiata. The book is quite pictorial, with segments of it told in comic form and most pages having far more image than text, meaning that getting through it was a relatively simple process. The book also portrays the story through Tupaia's worldview, meaning that the character 'Oro - the Tahitian God of War - also has an influence on the story, occasionally appearing in scenes involving some conflict or another. When Tupaia and Taiata eventually die, this worldview is continued, as the final pages present a 'crossing over' poetic event of sorts focussing on the Tahitian beliefs about such things. By presenting the story of a lesser-known fig...

Published by A.R. Shearer, Government Printer: Wellington, New Zealand, 1969. This year the high school I teach at has decided to do English modules at Year 10. The module I am developing is called Worlds and Journeys, and is slowly working through from ancient mythical journeys, to modern explorers, while also including fantasy and, eventually, science fiction elements. As a result I am doing a lot of research into various explorers, particularly ones with some connection to New Zealand. This short book gives a straight forward and relatively thorough description of Captain James Cook's circumnavigation of New Zealand, including within it the 1852 account of Te Horeta, a Maori chief, who was a boy at the time of Cook's visit. Te Horeta recounts the first impressions of Cook and his men arriving in Mercury Bay: "As our old men looked at the manner in which they came on shore, the rowers pulling with their backs to the bows of the boat, the old people said...'These peop...

Published by Longman Cheshire Pty Limited: Melbourne, Australia, 1989. Here is a book that I have read solely to get some ideas in putting together a unit of work for some of my English students. I selected the book from a pile being given away by my former Head-of-Department, and when I noticed that some of my students had an interest in mystery fiction, I pulled the book back out and read through it for ideas. For what I have been working on, it is a helpful, if slightly 'light' resource. McRobbie breaks the mystery genre down into its different elements - so chapters on such things as plot, settings and 'The Detective' - and intersperses them with original pieces of short mystery fiction. As someone who enjoys the 'whodunnit' genre, these stories are not very complicated, but then, that's not the point! Although for most of the stories I found myself going, "Well, of course its that person, they just said [insert incriminating statement here]," ...