Featuring Pacific Island heroes

Preview of a Magpies article…

The July issue of Magpies (an Australasian children’s book review magazine) will contain an article about David Riley, Reading Warrior (visit him at https://readingwarrior.com). Many New Zealand teachers, librarians and young readers will already know David and his passion to get teenagers reading, particularly boys from Pacific Island backgrounds.

David sent three self-published books as examples of the main strands of reading material he’s currently creating and marketing. The first category covers books about Pacific Island heroes and achievers. The book he sent is Samoan Heroes (Reading Warrior, 2015, a Storylines Notable Book). It’s a solid, glossy book packed full of information and graphics about mythological heroes, sporting stars, and achievers in areas such as literature, politics, science and music.

The second category consists of books about sporting stars written for teenage readers, including well-known athletes such as Steven Adams, Sonny Bill Williams, and Benji Marshall. Again, the books in this series are packed with personal and professional information about the star, along with numerous action photographs. The supplied example of this category was Jammin’ With Steven Adams (Reading Warrior, 2015, a Storylines Notable Book).

The third category is the Reading All Stars series, which are smaller, shorter books about local sports stars written for younger readers (and unconfident readers) of around intermediate age. The example is Joseph Parker (Reading Warrior, 2017), which has a bigger font and lots of interesting coloured photos.

Watch out for the Magpies article – it will also include a Selected Bibliography of David’s works. They can all be bought from https://readingwarrior.com

Lorraine Orman