New Zealand Hall of Fame - 50 Remarkable Kiwis

Written by MARIA GILL - Illustrated by BRUCE POTTER

RRP: $34.99

Children’s author Maria Gill has put together a collection of some of our most iconic Kiwis, selecting 50 famous New Zealanders who children might recognize and relate to easily.

One of the aims of New Zealand Hall of Fame was to make children understand that becoming famous doesn’t just happen overnight and without any effort. Instead, Maria wanted to show how the determination and hard graft of these talented people helped lift them to the top of their chosen field.

To get started, she chose several different areas of achievement, breaking it down into the following categories: adventurers, artists, inventors, leaders, pioneers, scientists and sportspeople.

Those who were then recognized as an expert in that particular field and were deemed to have made a significant contribution to New Zealand – and to the world – were then chosen. Maria knew it was crucial to present a varied range of talent across cultures, sex and attributes. She also acknowledged that there were some obvious dead famous people that couldn’t be left out (i.e. Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Peter Blake, Jean Batten).

And what a task this selection was! Maria’s dilemmas about who to choose and who to leave out of the line-up meant an endless chopping and changing of content. With input from teachers, editors, bookshops, Facebook and even her own children, the list was refined!

Crucially, each of these talented New Zealanders was considered by the author to be someone who would be an inspiration to a young reader: “I wanted the book to inspire children to achieve their dreams and goals,” Maria says. Each double-page spread shows what each person was like as a child, with photographs of their childhood and true stories of their early years, alongside direct quotes. By speaking to each person (or close family) and reading their biographies, Maria was able to get a firsthand insight into the journey of each one of the 50 Kiwis selected for the book.

Caricatures from illustrator Bruce Potter capture the essence of each person as well as the photographic picture ‘strips’, trophy boards, fascinating box panels and timelines, which all help build the profiles of these 50 remarkable Kiwis.
 

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