
Guide To Rocks
by Sacha Cotter
AUCK IN STOCK
WGTN IN STOCK
9781775507192
Sacha and Josh have collaborated previously on four picture books: Keys/Ngā Kī, The Marble Maker/Te Kaihanga Māpere, The Bomb/Te Pohū and Dazzlehands/Ringakōreko. Keys was a finalist in the picture book category and Ngā Kī was winner of the Māori Language Award of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2015. Ngā Kī also won Te Tohu Taurapa Award in the LIANZA Children’s Book Awards 2015 and was selected for the IBBY Honour List in 2016. Te Kaihanga Māpere won Te Kura Pounamu award of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2017. The Bomb was the supreme winner, the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, 2019, where it also won the Picture Book Award. It won the Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children’s Book, PANZ Book Design Awards, in 2019, and it won the Storylines Notable Book Award, Picture Book, 2019.
I love what these two do and in this guide they manage the complexity of dealing with your emotions with the same wit and charm of Dazzlehands’ Disco Pig championing their own style and The Bomb’s young boy putting his own stamp on the dive-bomb. The message is delivered with a real sense of fun and the text and illustrations sit seamlessly together on the page. This is a celebration of New Zealand culture to boot. The kiwi BBQ serves as the initial setting for young Charlie to confront his dad about the weight he’s recently been feeling on his shoulders, the rocks that just won’t go away. Dad is in a quandary and consults his guidebook – this is a reminder of a 1960’s Esquire Magazine book I picked up second-hand titled What Every Young Man Should Know – full of the so-called authoritative and informed opinion that would have us stockpile those rocks rather than share the burden. / RC
