Here are 100 books that Telesa fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was an avid reader from the age of six. Books inspired me and, as a shy girl, stories helped me find the confidence to be myself. I felt amazed and inspired by reading – finding out about parts of the world I had never been to. Especially as an adult, I’ve been blessed with wonderful, female friends. These are the themes I explore now in my books. I hope to inspire young readers to be themselves and celebrate friendship. I love travelling and nature. I've lived in various parts of the US and England. Through my writing, I hope to share the wonder of different cultures and natural settings.
I love the ocean, and love stories about strong, ground-breaking young women. This tale is beautifully set in a coastal town in New Zealand. Kahu, a young girl from a lineage of Maori leaders, can communicate with whales. Her grandfather does not expect this and rejects her because of her gender. Kahu proves without a doubt that she is a competent and natural leader. I love how Kahu prevails. She is strong in herself, and she never shies away from the truth – that she is the natural leader and a whale rider like her ancestor.
Eight-year-old Kahu craves her great-grandfather's love and attention. But he is focused on his duties as chief of a Maori tribe in Whangara, on the East Coast of New Zealand - a tribe that claims descent from the legendary 'whale rider'. In every generation since the whale rider, a male has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir - there's only Kahu. She should be the next in line for the title, but her great-grandfather is blinded by tradition and sees no use for a girl. Kahu will not be ignored. And in her struggle…
As a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand who cares deeply about social issues and human rights, I believe fiction has the power to change hearts and minds and bring us all together with greater compassion and understanding. When I was growing up here, there were few books published by Pacific or Māori writers and we were taught little about their customs or mythologies. I’ve loved watching this change over the last forty-odd years (and particularly the last ten years) and can see how access to these stories has not only empowered Māori and Pacific youth and brought them closer to their culture but enriched everyone who lives in our pacific paradise!
Another classic title by one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most-loved storytellers. This moving story follows the special friendship forged between Jonasi, a lonely deaf-mute pacific islander, and a huge white turtle. It’s a book about isolation and prejudice, and how love can heal all. One review describes it as ‘somewhere between fact and fiction, superstition and the supernatural.’It’s another that’s been made into a fabulous film.
The Silent One is Jonasi, sent from the sea as a baby to grow up in an isolated Pacific village. Separated from the villagers by his silence and their prejudices, Jonasi finds solace in his underwater world where he develops a special relationship with a huge white turtle. However, the superstitious villagers see both Jonasi and the turtle as evil spirits. A series of natural disasters and a struggle for leadership within the village sweep Jonasi toward his strange destiny.
As a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand who cares deeply about social issues and human rights, I believe fiction has the power to change hearts and minds and bring us all together with greater compassion and understanding. When I was growing up here, there were few books published by Pacific or Māori writers and we were taught little about their customs or mythologies. I’ve loved watching this change over the last forty-odd years (and particularly the last ten years) and can see how access to these stories has not only empowered Māori and Pacific youth and brought them closer to their culture but enriched everyone who lives in our pacific paradise!
A book about conquering bullying and standing up for what you believe in, the Māori word ‘pōrangi’ in title means mentally ill. It tells the story of Niko, who lives in a small, rural Aotearoa New Zealand town with a sacred hot spring—and a taniwha (a water monster of Māori legend) named Taukere. When his grandfather dies, Niko must bring the townsfolk together to stop a prison being built on sacred land and convince them the taniwha is real.
Twelve-year-old Niko lives in Pohe Bay, a small, rural town with a sacred hot spring and a taniwha named Taukere. The government wants to build a prison over the home of the taniwha, and Niko's grandfather is busy protesting. People call him porangi, crazy, but when he dies, it's up to Niko to convince his community that the taniwha is real and stop the prison from being built. With help from his friend Wai, Niko must unite his whanau, honour his grandfather and stand up to his childhood bully.
As a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand who cares deeply about social issues and human rights, I believe fiction has the power to change hearts and minds and bring us all together with greater compassion and understanding. When I was growing up here, there were few books published by Pacific or Māori writers and we were taught little about their customs or mythologies. I’ve loved watching this change over the last forty-odd years (and particularly the last ten years) and can see how access to these stories has not only empowered Māori and Pacific youth and brought them closer to their culture but enriched everyone who lives in our pacific paradise!
Tui and Kae, fourteen-year-old twins, are sucked into the Māori underworld, Rarohenga, and must rescue their mother before they’re all trapped there forever. Exciting, mysterious, and full of Māori mythology, this book shows how, in order to truly understand our own unique identity, we must also understand who and where we came from.
It seems like an ordinary day when Tui and Kae, fourteen-year-old twins, get home from school – until they find their mother, Maia, has disappeared and a swirling vortex has opened up in her room. They are sucked into this portal and dragged down to Rarohenga, the Māori Underworld, a shadowy place of infinite dark levels, changing landscapes and untrustworthy characters. Maia has been kidnapped by their estranged father, Tema, enchanted to forget who she really is and hidden somewhere here. Tui and Kae have to find a way through this maze, outwit the shady characters they meet, break the…
I’m a professional history nerd who is perennially interested in both sides of the history coin: What happened? How do we know? I’ve got a PhD in sixteenth-century European history, have written articles that cover things from antiquity to Vikings in America, and have written several history books about Australia and its region. I like history that is robust, so I’m always looking for books that make clever use of sources. And I love stories that disrupt preconceptions, so I enjoy researching and writing and reading histories that make you think.
If the British empire’s first historians had a knack for anything it was omitting to mention what some of what their predecessors did for the sake of empire. Aboriginal Convicts is one of those books that really challenges us to rethink the stories we have received about British colonization. By tracing the lives of Indigenous people in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand who were sentenced to transportation as convicts this groundbreaking book turns the table on the way we see Britain’s empire in the nineteenth century.
When most of us imagine an Australian convict we see an Englishman or an Irish lass transported for stealing a loaf of bread or a scrap of cloth. Contrary to this popular image, however, Australian penal settlements were actually far more ethnically diverse, comprising individuals transported from British colonies throughout the world.
As Kristyn Harman shows in Aboriginal Convicts, there were also a surprising number of indigenous convicts transported from different British settlements, including ninety Aboriginal convicts from all over Australia, thirty-four Khoisan from the Cape Colony (South Africa) and six Maori from New Zealand.
My book builds on the foundation laid by my five recommended books (as well as several others). Anuta is a remote Polynesian community in the Solomon Islands. It is one of the few remaining islands where voyaging canoes are still constructed regularly, constitute a part of everyday life, and where inter-island travel in such canoes never ceased. I was first there for a year in 1972–73 and was introduced to Anutan maritime practice. During that visit, I took part in a four-day voyage to Patutaka, an uninhabited island thirty miles away.
This book was also published under the title Vikings of the Pacific and was written by New Zealand Māori scholar Sir Peter Buck (also known by his Māori name, Te Rangi Hīroa). It was a pioneering work explaining, from an Indigenous perspective, the process through which the islands of Polynesia came to be settled over thousands of years by voyagers traveling in outrigger or double-hulled canoes without navigational instruments.
As an anthropologist whose research has focused on Polynesia and who has always been interested in maritime issues, I was intrigued by the questions this book raised and motivated to explore them during my own ethnographic fieldwork.
Pp. xiii, 335; frontispiece plate of the author, 57 black-and-white photo-plates, 4 maps. Publisher’s original wine-red cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine and front cover, front cover with gilt boat, endpaper maps, 8vo. The author served as director of the Bernice B. Bishop Museum in Hawaii. The volume discusses the peopling of the islands of the Pacific Ocean in detail. No ownership marks.
I come from the Dusun hilltribes of Indigenous Borneo. My mountain is Kinabalu, and my river is Kiulu. My upbringing gives me a new way to talk about the world. I have participated in ongoing rituals, witnessed the loss of once-abundant wilderness, and shared in stories that are filled with ancient wisdom. My Elders’ knowledge about the land, sea, and sky is etched in my memory, grounding me to cultural roots and prompting reflection on life’s essential questions. In my travels, I have found that these universal questions intersect with the stories and experiences of Indigenous communities worldwide. This worldview urges me to not let these stories fade.
Drawing both tears and laugh-out-loud laughter, this compilation of short stories by Māori writers from Aotearoa transported me to magical worlds and ideas.
It’s a gem on my recommendation list, uncovering endless nuggets of golden meaning and messages. I especially relish the humor unique to Māori storytelling.
I respect the simplicity and significance of short stories for their ability to offer a quick read before bedtime or as a morning indulgence. I found great pleasure in diving into any story on any page on any given day or night (when I almost forgot to go to sleep), like enjoying good poetry, the words dance, sing, and linger long long after.
Hiwa is a vibrant, essential collection of contemporary Maori short stories, featuring twenty-seven writers working in English or te reo Maori. The writers range from famous names and award winners - Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Whiti Hereaka, Becky Manawatu, Zeb Nicklin - to emerging voices like Shelley Burne-Field, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Anthony Lapwood and Colleen Maria Lenihan.
A showcase of contemporary talent, Hiwa includes biographical introductions for each writer's work, and explores the range of styles and subjects in the flourishing world of Maori fiction.
Named for Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the ninth star of Matariki, signifying vigorous growth and dreams of the…
My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
I love the setting of this mystery: New Zealand during World War II. Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealander, but most of her well-known mysteries are set in England. This one has fascinating Māori characters as well as the usual blustery English ones.
Add a Nazi spy and our intrepid Inspector Roderick Alleyn in disguise, a complex plot, plus a truly surprising ending, and you’ve got a recipe for exactly the kind of mystery I like to escape into.
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand's North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.
It was a horrible death - Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.
Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted - if he wasn't a spy himself...
My family and I moved from America to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2019. As a children’s author, one of the best parts has been discovering a new world of literature. New Zealand is a very small country, so bookstores, libraries, and schools are filled with books from the U.S., the UK, Australia, and more. As one New Zealander so eloquently put it, “Kiwi kids read the world.” On the flip side, it’s extremely rare for books from New Zealand publishers to make it to other parts of the world, no matter how great they are. I hope this introduction to Kiwi KidLit makes you eager to seek out even more!
Matariki, the Māori new year, comes in late June, winter in New Zealand. It begins when the star cluster known as Matariki first appears in the sky. It’s a time of honoring ancestors, being with family, reflecting on the past, and dreaming for the future.
This moving story by Brianne Te Paa is about a boy who takes the lead in honoring his koro (grandfather), who dies shortly before Matariki. The sadness and warmth come through the night-sky color palette and the grown-up-feeling illustrations. To an American still learning about Matariki and Māori culture, this story feels unique, yet the way it captures the bonds between whānau (family) makes it feel universal.
A young boy learns about the customs around celebrating Matariki from his grandfather. They watch the stars from the top of a mountain, prepare their offering of food for the gods, and the boy learns about Te Waka o Rangi and the tradition of calling out the names of loved ones who have passed away so that they can become stars. Just before Matariki the following year, the boy's Koro suddenly dies. He gathers and prepares the food offering and asks each family member to come with him up the mountain when Matariki is due to rise, but they all…
A dual citizen of Australia and the US, Christina Thompson has traveled extensively in the Pacific, including through most of the archipelagoes in Polynesia. She is the author of two books about Polynesia: a memoir of her marriage to a Māori man called Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All and a history of the ancient voyagers of the Pacific called Sea People. She edits the literary journal Harvard Review andteaches in the writing program at Harvard University Extension.
Two Worlds, by Dame Anne Salmond, is another crossover work—part history and part anthropology. The author, an eminent New Zealand anthropologist, uses her knowledge of traditional Māori culture (what people believed, what they ate, how they lived) to flesh out the historical record left by early European visitors to Aotearoa/New Zealand. The result is a rich, authoritative account of encounters that for far too long have been described from only one point of view.
Anne Salmond's brilliant study of first contact between Maori and European explorers - a trail-blazing achievement in narrative New Zealand history.
'Professor Salmond has written a remarkable book. Remarkable for its meticulous research, for its ability to grip the reader's attention; but most of all, remarkable that no-one has done anything quite like it before in the exploration of New Zealand history.' -Naylor Hillary, The Press
Two Worlds is Anne Salmond's award-winning account of the first points of contact between Maori and European explorers. It is a provocative, penetrating examination of those dramatic first meetings, casting them in a completely…
