WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? THE POLYNESIANS

Te Ao Hou, July 1973, Page 57

WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? THE POLYNESIANS by Barry Mitcalfe Illustrated by Alan Howie Price Milburn, $1.50 This book, “is written for 11 to 12 year olds (a range of about pupils S.4 to Form II) and it deals with questions of how people migrated, how culture changed and gives many practical exercises in the kind of deductive and scientific reasoning that underlies the whole ‘new’ Social Studies syllabus”—(which is currently being developed.) In this I would say Barry has succeeded in fulfilling the above aims. It introduces other authors naturally and in such a way that a student could progress from one idea through to another. That is, Percy Smith, Peter Buck, Thor Heyerdahl and on to Andrew Sharp, and yet it doesn't end there, does it?

The layout is pleasing and informative allowing the teacher to insist on mapwork and many other allied activities to complement the class work and study. Alan Howie's drawings do much to illustrate the feeling that the Maori and Polynesian were and are from a moving ever-changing yet basic cultural group that came from over the seas and are going to a point in time wherever that is. I feel this book would be valuable as a resource and work book in our classrooms and a steady prop for some of our teachers who aren't confident in their knowledge of things Maori and Polynesian.