Library Week includes The Grumble Rumble Mumbler
Writer Melanie Drewery. Photo: Neil Wilson.
Ruby Bay writer Melanie Drewery (Ngati Mahanga) enthralled young readers in Golden Bay last week.
As part of the celebrations of Library Week, Melanie visited the Takaka Memorial Library where she ran three sessions in which she read from her own works. About 120 children from schools throughout the Bay took part in the event.
Melanie has had 18 books published so far. She writes picture books and chapter books with a distinctly New Zealand flavour and her readers respond well to that.
Last Friday, she read from The Mad Tadpole Adventure, The Grumble Rumble Mumbler, Dad’s Takeaways and Nanny Mihi’s Birthday Surprise.
Melanie says that her stories contain universal themes “like love, and doing things with your family”.
“The messages make the stories more important,” she said. “I also like to include some Maori language in the stories in an incidental way,” she said. “When my kids were growing up they wanted to learn Maori but there weren’t all that many ways of doing it. The language is almost hidden in the stories. It’s non-threatening and natural.”
Melanie, who is a potter and an illustrator as well as a writer, teaches creative writing at NMIT. At the same time she is studying extramurally at Massey University.
