Kids: New Zealand books

There are so many fantastic authors in Aotearoa who have written so many fantastic books! We've picked out a few for you in a mixture of new and not-so-new.

Updated July 28, 2025
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Detective Beans & the case of the missing hat
Chen, Li
Paper Book
Meet Detective Beans, the best kitten detective in town, equipped with his tie, brown trench coat, and--GASP. It's gone! His detective hat is missing! Follow along to discover the charming, whimsical, and mysterious world of Detective Beans. Meet Detective Beans (just Beans for...
Snake and lizard
Cowley, Joy.
Paper Book
From award-winning author Joy Cowley comes an engaging story of two unlikely, but inseparable friends. Snake is elegant, calm and a little self-centered, while Lizard is exuberant and irrepressible. Through a series of small (and not so small) adventures, the two friends bicker, compete with each...
Nine girls
Gregg, Stacy
Paper Book
Winner of the two main children's book awards in Aotearoa New Zealand: the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award and the Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Award 2024. They dug a hole right there on our farm on the bank of the Mangawara and they put the box filled with gold inside...
The apprentice witnesser
MacDibble, Bren
Paper Book
Bastienne Scull is nearly twelve years old and lives a simple life as an apprentice to the Witnesser of Miracles in a small village mostly populated by women and girls. Basti knows that miracle-hunting is a lot like mystery-solving, and her little world is full of wonder and intrigue and unexpected...
The great piratical rumbustification & The librarian and the robbers
Mahy, Margaret.
Paper Book

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