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.

MAORI & PAKEHA, 1900 until today by Barry Mitcalfe Price Milburn, $1.50 Once again Barry recognises the value of other people's views and pays tribute by using these views liberally to form a platform from which to operate. The text then is succinct, precise, concise and an accurate summary of the historical context within which the Maori has lived and interacted from 1900 up to today. Barry does take the reader through the important phases of the Maori people, which today holds true: the young Maori party, Ratana, the depression and so on. Use and choice of photographs are such that they complement the text rather than compete with it, yet I feel that the choice of these could tend to limit the interest which a book of this kind could stimulate especially as it is a resource book. Perhaps the author if anything has not allowed for any individual thought on the part of the teacher or his pupils by directing their thinking and methods of study. Be that as it may this is a resource book and as such will fulfill a need in our classrooms. The N.Z. National Band is to take a Maori group of one man and seven girls on its three-month American tour between July and November 1974. Applications close on 31 August with the Secretary, N.Z.B.B.A., Box 13211, Armagh, Christchurch.

RECORDS reviewed by Alan Armstrong

‘MAUI'S FAREWELL’ by Dora Somerville; spoken by Inia Te Wiata Kiwi Stereo/Mono SLD-15 33⅓ rpm 12in LP ‘Maui's Farewell’ features Inia Te Wiata in a ‘dramatic verse monologue’ by the Wellington writer, Dora Somerville. Mrs Somerville is coyly reticent about her curriculum vitae because she feels that biographical details are ‘irrelevant to an understanding of her work’—which similarly appears to be a somewhat irrelevant reason for not including such details on the record cover! ‘Maui's Farewell’ was first published as a hand-set limited edition of 150 copies in 1966. Reviewing the publication in the New Zealand Listener, James K. Baxter, the late reigning guru of local writers, said, somewhat obscurely, that ‘The effect is not one of pastiche or macaronics but something like a rendering from an unknown Maori text. It is always her wit that saves her: a wit close to that of the Maori spirit itself, robust, ironic, and in the final origin, metaphysical.’ This is good stuff in the great tradition of New Zealand literary criticism which holds that it is less important to consider the work per se than to dazzle the reader with the critic's own wit and brilliance and to impress with his own erudition. Baxter was correct, however, when he likened a portion of the work to a Maori text. The story is told with typically Maori humour and Maui's exploits are embroidered by Dora Somerville's imagination in a wholly convincing way so that it is difficult to know where the Maui of traditional legend stops and the Maui of Dora Somerville begins. Maui as a true Maori hero is thus brought to life much more vividly than has been the case in published accounts to date of the Maui myth. ‘Maui's Farewell’ gains much more as a dramatic production than as a mere text to be read. However, there are also disadvant-