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Sep 7, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer |Patrick Ness |Tim Miller |Kate DiCamillo
Images / SuppliedChronicles of a Lizard Nobodyby Patrick Ness & Tim Miller Adult and YA fans of Patrick Ness will be holding their breath. Fear not, though, as a whole new generation of fans is set to be hooked on his quirky humour – enhanced by Tim Miller’s black-and-white illustrations – from the opening pages of this punny middle-fiction story. Monitor lizards on school hall duty?
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
dailymail.co.uk | Ann Packer
Keely Hodgkinson secured her status as Team GB's golden girl by becoming only the third British woman to win the 800m as she claimed gold at the Paris Olympics. The 22-year-old dominated the final in Paris to end her wait for a first global title by beating Ethiopia's Tsige Duguma and long-term rival Kenyan runner Mary Moraa.
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Jul 12, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer
A selection of some of the best new picture books for our young readers. Photo / SuppliedGrey by Laura Dockrill & Lauren Child (Walker Books, $29.99) From Laura Dockrill, a poet and author who wrote her way out of postpartum psychosis, and the much-loved illustrator Lauren Child, comes this exquisite depiction of moods and sadness for young ones.
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Jun 3, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer
Destashing: Ann Packer and daughter Genevieve. Photo / Supplied Opinion: Our lives are bound up with material stuff, from birth to death, the newborn swaddled in towels to the body wrapped in a shroud. So it’s fitting that Fabric-a-brac, a movement founded to extend the life of the woven and knitted material with which we dress our bodies and homes, should support refuges that offer care for the dying. Almost everyone has an association with hospice.
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May 8, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer |Emily Gale
Latest YA reads include local and international fiction. Photos / suppliedThe Apprentice Witnesserby Bren MacDibble (Allen & Unwin, $19.99) Western Australia-resident Kiwi Bren MacDibble has impressive credentials – she has won our junior fiction award twice (for How to Bee and The Dog Runner) and, as Cally Black, taken the YA award for In the Dark Spaces.
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Apr 9, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer
"What a beautiful book." Photo / Supplied What a beautiful book. Undoubtedly one for the book design awards, the pale-green-on-white-cover treatment of Six Legged Ghosts entices the reader to open it up. A gift to designer Alice Bonifant, the fungus moth that lingers on the conveniently subdivisible title may not be quite as glorious as the more widely known pūriri moth, or pepetuna (one of the ghosts of the title), but it’s every bit as alluring.
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Mar 5, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer
Beatrice Hill Tinsley: Queen of the Cosmos by Maria Gill and Alistair Hughes. Photo / Supplied She has an asteroid named after her. A mountain. A street, postage stamps, a couple of science labs and a whole university block. Plus several awards for top scholars, a biography by Dame Christine Cole Catley and a stage play, both called Bright Star. Beatrice Tinsley is rated alongside Ernest Rutherford and William Pickering as one of our three greatest scientists.
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Feb 18, 2024 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer
The Grimmelings by Rachael King. Photo / Supplied A lonely teenager. Parents missing in action. A boy who appears from nowhere. An enormous black stallion. So far, so classic. Yet nothing is what it seems in this first children’s book in more than a decade from Christchurch writer, reviewer and former festival director Rachael King.
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Dec 6, 2023 | 
kaitiaki.org.nz | Ann Packer
Clinical nurse specialist Lisa Caddis’s interest in what would become her master’s degree research project was sparked when she visited a heart failure patient in his home and discovered he had no power for two days each week – all because of the energy plan he was on. ‘We come across patients who are socially isolated, or missing appointments because they have no transport.’“When I arrived, he apologised for how cold it was,” she says.
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Nov 27, 2023 | 
nzherald.co.nz | Ann Packer |Deborah Robertson |Patrick Ness |Tea Bendix
Top picks: Lucy and the Dark by Melina Szymanik & Vasanti Unkam, Foxlight by Katya Balen and Sunshine on Vinegar Street by Karen Comer. Photos / SuppliedYoung AdultsBefore Georgeby Deborah Robertson (Huia) A powerful and moving story about identity, set immediately after the Tangiwai rail disaster. South Africa-born George, previously known as Marnya, reconstructs her life after surviving the train derailment in which 151 died, including, it seems, her mother and sister.
