Curious about Critters?
In Lily Duval and Nicola Toki’s Critters of Aotearoa and Six Legged Ghosts WORD Christchurch session we get to share their passion. I can’t wait to hear all about Aotearoa’s creepy crawlies. It's such a treat to have these two wāhine share their beautiful books with us. Lily wants us to change our attitudes to insects. We are in the midst of an “insect apocalypse”. Without insects life as we know it is challenged.
Reconnecting with the natural world beyond the “cute and cuddly” to value all critters, even the ugly and overlooked is Nicola Toki's goal. She is co-host of Radio New Zealand's Critter of the Week and the television series Endangered Species Aotearoa and together with artist, writer and researcher Lily Duval and Random House highlight tales of our unloved creatures in their book, Critters of Aotearoa. From birds of the sky to creatures of the deep and plants that look like sheep, New Zealand’s weird and wonderful critters needed celebrating.
Together Nicola Toki and Jesse Mulligan decided to shine a light on the unattractive, obscure and endangered. Letting it naturally evolve their Radio New Zealand Critter of the Week ensures each of those critters have their moment in the limelight. This show makes being ugly cool - the lower the critter attractiveness-ometer score, the more precious. There’s a lot of people sharing their love of insects backing up the show with Nicola including a host of amateur naturalists and volunteer Wikipedians. Random House took the natural step of producing this beautiful book based on the show illustrated by Lily Duval.
An ideal book for families to share together full of quirky facts. For instance, did you know our rare Archey’s frog (Leiopelma archeyi) doesn’t have tadpoles or live in ponds or rivers or have webbed feet? Weird huh?
I can’t wait to hear about their discoveries and how Lily wrestled her Canterbury University masters into her first book Six-Legged Ghosts. It’s full of fascinating information like how parthenogenetic aphids are like “nature’s matryoshka dolls”, they can have babies which are already pregnant. Lily paints our endangered and extinct creatures in action poses so we get a real sense of their lives - who would have thought she once feared insects! Her book gives us insights on the culture of insects, their influence on language, and how we describe them, their place in art and sculpture as well as talking about themes of colonisation and collecting in Aotearoa. 
Let’s come together as they share images and conversation. Let's find out what we can do in your own backyard and not let any more of our taonga species turn into ghosts. Be in quick for tickets see you on Friday 30th of August 1.30 in our TSB Space| Tautoru, Tūranga.
Find more
- Titles by Lily Duval
- Titles by Nicola Toki
- Animals reading list
- Popular Science Reading guides
- Speaker Series @ Tūranga | Bugs, Birds & Bats - protecting native wildlife in your backyard, 6-7pm 12 September, Tūranga
Make your own picks of the festival - check the programme online online or picking up a printed copy from your library.
More WORD
- WORD Christchurch website
- Follow WORD Christchurch on Instagram, Facebook and X FKA Twitter
- Our WORD Christchurch 2024 page - Find titles and authors coming to this year's festival
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