FREE PRESENTATION : S.K.I.P speaker at Orewa Library

A presentation from S.K.I.P. (Strategies with Kids, Information for Parents) will be held at Orewa Library on Friday 18 April at 6pm. Nibbles and juice provided. Parents and kids welcome.

The session is FREE and reports from previous sessions have been excellent.

For more information about S.K.I.P see the information page on the Ministry of Social Development website.

Auckland Writers and Readers festival - tickets available now

I'm so excited. My guide to the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival '08 arrived this week. The festival is on in the middle of May - Wednesday 14 - Sunday 18. Tickets are available now from the-edge website or you can choose to go the snail mail route. I'd get in quick as there are some great authors lined up and the events are sure to be well attended.

The 'New Zealand Listener Opening night' event features J.M. Coetzee, Junot Diaz, Witi Ihimaera and Sarah Hall chaired by Kim Hill. "Listen to their voices and you will always hear the rhythm of their intonations whenever you read their work in future. A highly anticipated event of readings." The festival website has a little bio for each invited author and the event chairs. Have a look at the A-Z list.

What will I be going to? I have no idea because I just can't choose!

Remembering the Wahine

For some reason I always think of the Wahine tragedy as part of New Zealand's long past history. Sure I have run across people in my time who can remember it happening and even someone who was one of the lucky survivors. But it was sobering watching the documentary last week to realise that it actually happened in my lifetime. And one of my fellow librarians who lived in Wellington at the time can vividly remember the storm and the family huddling in the middle of the living room.

Today marks 40 years since the tragedy, with special services (both public and private) being held around Wellington to mark the occasion (and probably many more private moments around the country as people remember.

There are some excellent resources for those wanting to know more about the Wahine.

• The Maritime New Zealand website has a comprehensive history of the vessel and the events of the day.
• Both the Wellington Library and the Christchurch Library have excellent resource pages.
• The National Library has links through the newspapers and images from the period
• Rodney Libraries have a number of books about the Wahine disaster, both fiction and non-fiction, for both adult and children. On of my favourites for children is Abandon ship! : the diary of Debbie Atherton, Wellington, 1968 (Shirley Corlett) which is part of the My Story series. Each event is narrated in diary form by a child who is part of the action. For a slightly higher age group try No Safe Harbour (David Hill).

Pulitzer Prize to Bob Dylan

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has received an honorary Pulitzer Prize for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture".
The special music award recognised the 66-year-old's "lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power". Prize administrator Sig Gissler said the honour "reflects the efforts of the Pulitzer board to broaden the scope of the music prize".
The awards, named after newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, carry a prize of $US10,000 ($NZ12,828).
Previous recipients of the special musical Pulitzer include jazz icon John Coltrane, composer George Gershwin and science-fiction author Ray Bradbury.
Dylan's award marks the first time the panel has recognised a rock musician.
The Pulitzer Prize for drama was awarded to Tracy Letts for August: Osage County. Junot Diaz won the fiction prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.The Washington Post won six Pulitzers, including the prestigious Public Service gold medal award for its reporting on conditions of United States war veterans at the Walter Reed military hospital
Story source - The Press via www.stuff.co.nz

Summits for Ed Tribute Tour

The "Summits for Ed Tribute Tour" comes to Rodney in April so if you want to take part in a final local ceremony as part of a nationwide tribute, this is your chance.

The Rodney Summit will be The Dome, just north of Warkworth and the walk will take place on Wednesday 16th April from 8.00 am. The meeting place is the Dome Tearooms carpark on State Highway 1. The walk to the summit usually takes about an hour.

There are two parts to the summit ceremony. The first part is the walk which includes local celebrities and identities and is being overseen by local Lions Club members. For the second part of the ceremony all participants are asked to bring a rock, stone or pebble from their favourite place which will be incorporated into a memorial cairn at the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre at Tongariro.

If you can't make the Dome Summit ceremony, there are others around the greater Auckland and Whangarei area so check out the website http://www.summitsfored.org.nz/ for details.

Ka kite ano

(photo from the Summits for Ed website)