The Kai Stars of Matariki Tupuanuku and Tupuarangi product reviews

Matariki has quickly become my children's favourite holiday, they get to do lots of crafts and usually get to eat some yummy food with their small rural school, this year we are even digging a hole and putting down a hangi for the school! We have been enjoying the stories about Matariki written by Miriama Kamo and were excited to see that the third book had recently been published. The first two stories were exciting, and it was interesting to see the authors interpretation about what Matariki means and putting it into a way that young children can enjoy.

Like with the other books in the series, the illustrator Zak Waipara has used vivid colours that interact well with the images, my youngest son particularly liked the images of the eels, but predominantly liked the images of the patupaiarehe / fairy folk. Throughout the story the illustrator has made the words from the author come alive and it is easy to become mesmerized by the storyline.

When we started reading the story we noticed that the story takes place around the area of New Zealand called Birdlings Flat, my children got excited as this was an area we had stopped and explored during the last holidays, and we collected some special rocks as mementoes. The story focuses on the kai (food) aspect of Matariki, these stars are called Tupuanuku and Tupuarangi, and how not all the food we eat has to be bought from a grocery store, such as eels and fish can be found in the local rivers. The kai of Tupuarangi is the food that grows above the ground, like fruit on trees etc., and Tupuanuku is the food that comes from under the earth, such as our vegetables like potatoes and kumara to name a couple, it's just a matter of being able to find it and cook it.

As Matariki was coming closer the children in the story were helping to gather food, however the fairy folk had decided to help themselves to the eels that were meant for the feast, the children decided that the fairy folk needed to fix their wrong and made them go fishing for some more to replace what they had eaten, the catch was they had to do it before the sun came up as they hate the sunlight more than they hate cooked eel, by dawn they had managed to catch piles of eels for the children to take home to their grandparents to cook straight away so the fairy folk couldn't eat it again! The feast was a success!

We all thoroughly enjoyed this book; however, I did get caught up a bit with my Māori pronunciation in some parts, which my eldest son quickly corrected me on. We have decided to donate this book to the local school as we have already donated the first two, this keeps their series up to date, and the children get to read them each Matariki while they do their focused learning. I look forward to seeing what the fourth book entails.