PATU: The New Zealand Wars
by Gavin Bishop
(Puffin), out on October 3.
“Monumental” is the only way to describe this book from last year’s Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award winner. Covering in painstaking detail the movements of people and troops in the early years of colonial settlement, it honours those who played a part, as a cenotaph might. What makes the kaumātua of New Zealand children’s literature uniquely qualified to cover this turbulent period in our history is the personal connection: his grandfather, Benjamin “Banjo” McKay, born in 1847, was one of the children of John Horton McKay and
