Ki Te Moe Aotearoa product reviews

Having already reviewed the English version of this book with a friend's children, I was looking forward to reading the Te Reo version with another family. It is always rewarding to share books like this with them as they are such a great audience; but I was in for an unexpected bonus this time round. It was a wonderful surprise to find that the translation is a work of art in its own right. It is beautifully crafted, following the original story closely, but with a little poetic licence here and there to enhance the whole experience.

The illustrations are delightful, colourful and striking. Even Mr Two, who is sometimes too bouncy to settle and listen to a story, was taken by the graphics. He loved the pictures of all the different beds and their occupants at the end of the book, and kept wanting to go back to that page and point to the individual sleepers again. I asked him which one he thought he was. He pointed to the karetao, possibly because the bedclothes were similar to those belonging to the child near the start of the book! I could not see any other resemblance, but who can fathom the thought processes of a two-year-old?

The three older children loved the story itself; we took a long time to read from start to finish as we did a great deal of revisiting pages we had already looked at. There is so much detail in each picture; every time we looked at a page, one of us noticed something else we had missed the last time. The dolls' house in the child's bedroom was especially popular as they picked out more and more of the details. The tentacles hanging out the window were particularly funny. They noticed that some were sleeping in funny places like the excavator bucket or the bath - and were relieved that all the creatures had managed to get a proper bed by the end of the book!

I noticed as we read that some of the children were getting quite sleepy; what had started as a fun romp through the book had gradually resulted in their winding down. One of the twins lay on the sofa after we had finished, and asked if she could look at the book just once more before they all went to bed. The other three had melted away one by one, ready to snuggle down. And our intrepid reader? She had made herself so comfortable that she had fallen asleep clutching the book. We had to carry her into the bedroom and tuck her in without rousing her. Mission accomplished!