Books Kuma is a Maori Girl by Dennis Hodgson and Pat Lawson. Hicks, Smith and Sons 8/6 This book for children is about Kuma, a little Maori girl who lives in Auckland with her family. The story is told mostly through photographs. We see her doing all the things that children do—playing football with her father, going to the zoo, swimming, going to school, and so on. Then she goes to Rotorua for a holiday with her grandmother, and looks at some of Rotorua's ‘sights’. ‘Kuma is a Maori Girl’ is realistic and convincing, showing Maoris as they really are. For example, when Kuma visits Rotorua she goes to see the village at the model pa at Whakarewarewa; but the story does not pretend that she lives in a house like these. It has already shown that she lives in the same sort of house as anyone else. This is one of the very few good books for children which have been written in New Zealand. Probably it is the best story so far written about Maori children.

NEW ZEALAND BOOKS Some new Oxford Titles INFANTRY BRIGADE (Paperbound reprint), by Major-General Sir Howard Kippenberger, with a foreword by Lord Freyberg 15/- N.Z. THE DISCOVERY OF NEW ZEALAND (Revisted Edition), by J. C. Beaglehole 21/- N.Z. A HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND (Bound Edition), by Keith Sinclair 25/- N.Z. … from all good booksellers … OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS BOX 185, WELLINGTON

The Art of Maori Carving by Sidney M. Mead. A. H. & A. W. Reed 16/- Mr Mead, who is well-known as a leader in Maori education and as a writer, will need no introduction to readers of Te Ao Hou. He sets out in this book to do two things: to discuss the history and significance of Maori carving, and to provide a manual for people who are beginning to learn carving. The book is very well produced, and has many illustrations. It is most reasonably priced, and many people, especially perhaps teachers who are interested in Maori crafts, will find it most valuable. —M.O. Dr. J. C. Beaglehole's standard work “The Discovery of New Zealand” has been republished recently by the Oxford University Press (21/-). The text has been very much revised, to include the results of research of the last twenty years, especially Dr Beaglehole's own research on James Cook, to whom most of the book is devoted. Dr Beaglehole explains, in a new preface, that he has not changed his chapter on ‘The Polynesians’ to fit in with the theories of Mr Andrew Sharp. Although he admits Mr Sharp ‘must be reckoned with’, he reminds us that the discussion of Maori origins ‘is a battlefield littered with gashed theories and not a few dead bodies of speculation’. Early New Zealand History in Pictures, by Charles McKenzie, A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1961, retells some of the facts in the form of a comic strip. This will be very useful to those who find it easier to assimilate facts by means of comic strips than in any other way. Undoubtedly this book, if placed in school libraries, would be eagerly devoured. One looks forward hopefully to a similar treatment of fractions and decimals. Two useful New Zealand books, especially for younger readers, are ‘Colourful New Zealand’, Jarrold & Son, 4/6, and ‘Camera Studies of the Small World’, by A. T. Bandsma and R. T. Brandt, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1961, 13/6. The first of these two books is mainly for overseas tourists; its value in this country is that it contains over thirty extremely well-printed colour photographs of New Zealand towns and countryside. It is hard to get good colour photographs of that kind; they will be useful for Social Studies in schools. ‘The Small World’ is a collection of very fine photographs of New Zealand insects, each accompanied by a short note about the insect concerned. The notes are interesting and will be of some use in nature study; unfortunately no attempt has been made to give Maori names for the insects. The main value of this book too lies in the pictures which are in some cases quite unique. E.G.S.