Anzac week 2015

This was my Anzac week:

Book tour in south Taranaki: lots of great kids and librarians, library displays, the Hawera water tower lit up at night, the beach at Opunake, small town war memorials everywhere, Ronald Hugh Morrieson memorabilia!

Anzac parade, and the little children loving the red poppies, scooping up armfuls of them afterwards.

Arriving at the 5.30am dawn service at 5am and finding it already packed.
Visiting the new Great War exhibition in the old museum.
Reading messages left at our local war memorial.

Watching the dawn service at Gallipoli on the big screen, exchanging messages with last year's Gallipoli Volunteers - wonderful people (here are some of them!) - and all of us thinking about this year's Red Coats, working hard but having an amazing time!

New Anzac Day books

Some lovely books coming out in time for this year's Anzac Day. Here are two of them:

The last Anzac by Gordon Winch, illustrated by Harriet Bailey. Harriet was kind enough to answer some questions for me about the book and her beautiful illustrations, which I've posted on my Children's war books blog.



Roly the Anzac donkey by Glyn Harper, beautifully illustrated by Jenny Cooper - also reviewed here on my blog, and no 1 on the NZ children's bestseller list last week:



An unexpected hero by L.P Hansen is not an Anzac Day book as such, but it has some interesting perspectives on the idea of heroism in war. Linda Hansen shared some of her thoughts about it with me here. 



And a book that came out last year - Meet the Anzacs by Claire Saxby, illustrated by Max Berry. Claire also answered some questions for me about her work, and in return hosted me on her blog, called Let's have words. (And look at her post for 12 April - a lovely pairing in an Auckland shop window!) 

#