What a brilliant overview of NZ's history! I loved the little interesting facts tucked in and around the illustrations. ( )

This book is exceptional! A wonderful informative introduction to the story of Aotearoa, Bishop's large format map book is packed full of facts on everything from Gondwanaland, the arrival of waka from Hawaiki, Pakeha arrival, the Musket Wars, the Treaty of Waitangi, the New Zealand Wars, World War I, employment, housing, education, World War II, food, clothing, disasters, Maori protest and a call to protect our precious environment. The heavily detailed illustrations are beautifully rendered and the addition of a contents page and glossary are truly valuable. A lovely book to navigate your way through with tamariki and a gentle way to introduced important issues to children for further discussion and exploration. This would make a fabulous gift! ( )

In this incredible picture book Gavin Bishop achieves what seemed to be impossible. In sixty-five pages, he manages to cover the history of Aotearoa from the time it broke away from Gondwanaland through to some time in the future. Each large format spread features Gavin's beautiful illustrations along with some minimal text and repays detailed study. Each spread contains a limited palette. Earlier spreads are rich in blue/green and brown/orange tones, however, as time passes other colours are introduced to great effect - black and red/orange for WWI and II, grey for disasters, blue for 'The Long Depression' and a hopeful green for 'Tomorrow . . .'
Maori imagery features throughout and Gavin comments that "The wairua, or spiritual force of Hinepau appears on every page of this book to remind us of the Maori presence in Aotearoa yesterday, today and tomorrow."
The book ends with a glossary of the Maori words used in the book along with a couple of other notes. This is no index, but each double page spread has a title and these are listed in the contents with page references given, so it should be relatively easy to find what you are looking for. Many pages contain maps of New Zealand and this book was originally conceive as a book of maps but Gavin has gone beyond that brief to give us something much richer. This is not the sort of picture book you read all in one sitting but is, instead, a book to be lingered over and savoured. It is a picture-book for all ages that has a place in every New Zealand home. ( )