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Home > Categories > Books > Kids - Junior > Para Pūkeko 1: Para Pūkeko and the Stupid Time Thingy review
Just how much trouble can come about when a time machine falls into the claws of a scavenging swamp hen? Find out in the first book of this brilliant comic series rampaging all over New Zealand's timeline...
A pūkeko and a tuatara cause time-travelling chaos in this hilarious graphic novel for readers six years and older, by comic artist Book Ruffell.
A dump-diving swamp hen.
A wisecracking tuatara.
A big red button.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Para is a pūkeko with an insatiable appetite for junk food and poor impulse control. One day, while scavenging for treats in a new pile of rubbish at the dump, she discovers* a mysterious machine with a big red button just begging to be pressed. In a flash of blue light, Para is sent back 200 million years, and rescues** Heahea, a trashbag tuatara, moments before an asteroid hits.
All Para wants is to get back to the present and her dirty old dump, but it's not so easy with Heahea along for the ride. The hapless duo keep crash-landing into different time periods and causing chaos and carnage wherever they go.
Full of hilarity, with a dash of danger and a fun historical angle, this is the perfect book for young readers who like their comics irreverent and served up with lots of laughs.
*chokes on
**entirely by accident
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Review by: mizim (Miriam)
Dated: 11th of June, 2023
I find myself wanting to read New Zealand books that are actually set in New Zealand (don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good books by Kiwi authors, not set in NZ, but I want more that are set in our island country). Para Pukeko follows, you guessed it, a pukeko who accidentally finds a big red button, pushes it and finds herself in the year 200 million BCE, saves a tuatara and ends up travelling forwards through time, all with the hope of ending back up in her stinky old dump. Of course, things don't go so easily and they keep running into danger after trouble after mix-up.
I think this is a fun little romp through NZ history, it doesn't really touch on many topics but when you're aiming your book at the 5-9 age range, you don't want to jam too much in. The illustrations are nice, bright and colourful, I think they'd catch the eye of anyone who loves the DogMan series (and similar). There's a nice amount of humour and when we have Maori characters, they speak in Maori with the translations underneath. At the end of the book there is a little walkthrough the moments in history that Para ends up visiting, nice and simple, and the promise of more time travelling pukeko and tuatara antics.
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