Kia ora e te Hapori o Ōtautahi,
Was one of your goals for the year to read more? To delve into the world of Māori literature? Expand your horizons and increase your mātauranga around Māori writings?
Well, we have heard of a reading challenge that could be of interest to you!
Māori Lit Reading Challenge 2025
Let us introduce you to ‘Māori Lit Blog’, an Instagram account that has an avid interest in Māori literature. This account isn’t linked to Christchurch City Libraries and is run independently from our organisation, but it does happen to have a following of staff from Christchurch City Libraries. It is this very following that has led us to the ‘Māori Lit Blog 2025 Reading Challenge’, a wero that a few of our staff have decided to take on.
To provide a bit more context Māori Lit Blog shared on their Instagram account a desire to read more this year and issued themselves a list of 16 different goals to try and achieve over the course of the year. They then shared this challenge with their Instagram community and here we are, as staff members from Christchurch City Libraries taking on the ‘Māori Lit Blog Reading Challenge'.
Listen to our Māori lit reading challenge book chat
With permission from the account holder of Māori Lit Blog, they are happy for us to promote and create content to push this challenge out to our community. And we're starting off with this post and by recording our discussion about the challenge.
Listen to Julia, Ngapiu, Māia, Alexandra discuss why they are participating in this challenge, what they’re excited or nervous about and other insights.
In part 2 (coming in July) we'll update you on how we're going!
Reading Māori literature? Let us know!
We will also create some booklists available on our website that will allow you to follow our progress and maybe offer some suggestions for your own reading.
If you do get involved with the Māori Lit Blog Challenge, let us know which titles you you’ve been reading as a part of it by using the comment function on the item page in the library catalogue with a comment or review . You can also tag the item with "māorilitblogchallenge". And don’t forget to engage with the official Instagram account as well!
If you wanted to share your insights within a group setting we also have a monthly book club that is focused around the Ngā Pounamu Māori Collection – Te Kāhui Ōhua. This is a kaupapa that is free to attend and held in our Ngā Pounamu Māori Collection at Tūranga.
We have listed all of the books that we mentioned in the podcast below and which category they may fall under. Keep an eye out for our other booklists related to this kaupapa and feel free to share your insights with us and Māori Lit Blog.
Reading challenge titles mentioned in the podcast:
Here is a list of some of the resources that we mention in our podcast in no particular order. They have been grouped into their categories should you wish to take up the wero of the Māori Lit Blog.
Work of Science Fiction:
- Migration – Steph Matuku
- Hello Strange – Pamela Morrow
- Turncoat – Tīhema Baker
- The Ascension – Vincent Egan
A work that has been adapted into a film:
A biography by a Māori Writer:
Out of print poetry collection:
A novel that has a sequel:
A novel where the title is the name of a character:
Online short story:
- Whiro in Their Original Glory – Michelle Rahurahu and Essa May Ranapiri
- Scattershots – J.P. Pomare
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