Fascinating new NZ Series book details the history of animals in Aotearoa

The NZ Series 

Wild Life

An Animal History of Aotearoa

Philippa Werry

Entertaining account of New Zealand as lived by the animals broadens the wing span of The NZ Series 

Humans reached New Zealand about 1000 years ago, at which point animals had been here for several hundred million years. 

How was life before and after Māori and European arrival? What is unique about our species, how have they adapted over time and what is their future in a time of climate change? 

 

Award-winning author Philippa Werry takes the story back to Gondwanaland, looking at dinosaur life, the amazing tuatara, species evolutions over time and some of those that didn’t manage to survive, like the Haast’s eagle and huia. 

Coming to the modern era, the book surveys all aspects of animal life — from introduced pests, livestock and domestic pets to conservation efforts, zoos and animal celebrities like Shrek the sheep and Phar Lap.

This colourful ninth book in The NZ Series follows The Treaty of Waitangi, winner of the Margaret Mahy Supreme Book of the Year prize at the 2025 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

 

A free Teacher Resource for the book is available here.

The author

Philippa Werry is a writer of non-fiction and fiction for young readers. She has won numerous awards, including the Young Adult Fiction Award at the 2023 NZYCA Awards for her novel Iris and Me, and is well known for books on New Zealand society, including The NZ Series title New Zealand Migration (2023). She lives in Wellington (www.philippawerry.co.nz).

Publication: 10 February 2026  |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004298-0  |  RRP $29.99

Paperback, 240 x 160 mm portrait, 100 pages, colour

 

Revealing the history, origin and meaning of New Zealand place names

 

New Zealand Place Names

Common, Contested and Curious Names from Aotearoa to Zalatown

Peter Dowling & A.W. Reed

Whether you call it New Zealand or Aotearoa, this country carries a unique history — one of very few land masses where we know mostly who named places and what those names mean.

Our recent human settlement makes for a wealth of recorded information, but also much change in our names as competing claims play out today — just ask residents of Russell or Waimarino. 

New Zealand Place Names represents the most up-to-date and authoritative guide to this field, providing fascinating definitions for over 850 names with history, origin, meanings, curiosities and more. 

Working with the assistance of the New Zealand Geographic Board, editor and publisher Peter Dowling has provided new definitions to build upon the lifetime’s research of the late A.W. Reed. A grant from Copyright Licensing New Zealand assisted the project.

This general work includes a map, glossaries, and new appendices on prolific namers, controversies and how to name a place. 

New Zealand Place Names complements A.W. Reed's classic Māori Place Names, also published by Oratia Books.

The Authors

Peter Dowling has edited and extended various of A.W. Reed’s classic works including Māori Place Names (2017) and Place Names of New Zealand (2010). Brought up in Christchurch and resident in Auckland, Peter is the founder and publisher of Oratia Books.

A.W. Reed (1908–1979) was one of New Zealand’s most influential writers and publishers. He helped build A.H. & A.W. Reed into the country’s leading publisher and authored more than 200 books, including seminal books on place names, dictionaries and collections of traditional stories and legends.

Publication Date: 5 November 2025 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004288-1 |  RRP $39.99

Paperback, 234 x 153 mm portrait, 204 pages b&w

The Treaty of Waitangi — everything you need to know

The Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi

Ross Calman

Highly topical addition to The NZ Series spans the past, present and future implications of the Treaty of Waitangi 

With The Treaty of Waitangi headlining political news in recent months, understanding its meaning and history has never been more important.  

 

In this engaging addition to The NZ Series, author and editor Ross Calman demystifies Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and unravels its complexities — offering a fresh, well-rounded perspective.

 

Opening by exploring the context for the treaty’s drafting, Calman tracks its signing around the country, and then delves deep into the text and translation that caused so much contention in the following years.

By exploring the political role that the Treaty has played, through to the formation of the Waitangi Tribunal and recent protests, The Treaty of Waitangi goes beyond history to offer a lens on today’s society.

Using extensive photos, fact boxes and quotes, the book views New Zealand’s founding document from a range of modern perspectives. It touches on the Treaty’s role in popular culture, treaty settlements, and the debate and promise of reconciliation it inspires.

It brings the Treaty story up to the present day with consideration of the highly controversial Treaty Principles Bill now before Parliament.

This eighth book in The NZ Series — a non-fiction resource for general readers and schools that introduces complex subjects in concise terms — publishes in time for Waitangi Day 2025. 

The author

Courtesy Auckland Libraries

Ross Calman (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa, Kāi Tahu) is a distinguished author and editor who has written widely on the Treaty of Waitangi and the New Zealand Wars. With Oratia Books his works include He Atua, He Tangata: The World of Māori Mythology and Favourite Māori Legends. He lives in Ōtautahi/Christchurch.

Publication: 21 January 2025  |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004277-5 | RRP $29.99

Paperback, 240 x 160 mm portrait, 100 pages, colour

From bird to New Zealanders to Chinese gooseberries — new book tracks the worldwide flight of 'Kiwi'

Kiwi: A Curious Case of National Identity
Richard Wolfe

How did the Māori name for a flightless bird come to mean a New Zealander and a fruit that originated in China, while morphing into the badge for the national rugby league team and the air force? Not to mention becoming the brand name for everything from rabbit traps to a bank, and a term for pilots who are no longer flying? 

Kiwi: A Curious Case of National Identity tracks this unlikely evolution. Diving into the natural history of this unique bird and its significance to Māori, the story spreads its wings to relate how ‘kiwi’ came to symbolise the emerging nation during the First World War – thanks in part to a brand of boot polish originating in Australia. 

 

By the mid-twentieth century, while the bird population steadily declined, ‘kiwi’ was propagating everywhere from the Golden Kiwi lottery to the new 20-cent coin. 

 

After 1959, with the coining of ‘kiwifruit’ to replace the Chinese gooseberry, the emergence of this export industry has taken the national symbol into a fruit salad of uses worldwide. Along the way there’s been Kiwi the Melbourne Cup-winner, a couple of Kiwi airlines (neither of which flew for long) and TV’s beloved Goodnight Kiwi.

 

Richard Wolfe’s decades of Kiwiana collecting furnish the book with an array of colour photos, art and ephemera, making this a visually stimulating work for Kiwis and kiwi fans of all feathers. 

 

The Author

Richard Wolfe is a cultural historian and curator who has written or co-authored over 40 books on themes from the moa to New Zealand art, including Footprints on the Land: How Humans Changed New Zealand (Oratia Books, 2022), Hellhole of the Pacific and New Zealand’s Lost Heritage. He was a display artist at the Auckland and Canterbury museums, and co-curated the first major exhibition of Kiwiana (a term he helped invent). Richard lives with his artist wife Pamela in Auckland.

Publication Date: 10 October 2024 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004264-5 |  RRP $45

Paperback, 250 x 185 mm portrait, 208 pages, colour

The human impact on New Zealand revealed in captivating new book

Footprints on the Land
How Humans Changed New Zealand 

Richard Wolfe

It must have been a hell of a shock. After millions of years of isolation, New Zealand’s unique flora and fauna suddenly felt the stir of human footprints just over 800 years ago. 

In the blink of an eye in terms of the Earth’s history, the last large landmass to be settled by humans changed in ways impossible to reverse. 

 

Footprints on the Land narrates those changes, taking in the destruction of forests, draining and flooding land, building railways and roads, farming and mining, and the inexorable spread of towns and cities. 

Some of the more dramatic changes, carried out in the name of progress, appear very differently through a modern lens. 

 

Richard Wolfe accompanies his even-handed account of the effects of human settlement with an astute selection of paintings and photography befitting a curator and art writer. 

He also charts the growth of the environmental movement, with a number of high-profile national campaigns. 

That heightened awareness has helped to avoid repeating mistakes of the past, but Wolfe shows compellingly that we are not yet — as it were — out of the woods. 

Habitat destruction, pollution, species introductions and (above all) climate change threaten the short history of people on these islands. When will the shock be absorbed?

The Author

Richard Wolfe is a cultural historian and curator who has written or co-authored some 40 books on themes from the moa to New Zealand art, including Hellhole of the Pacific and New Zealand’s Lost Heritage. He was a display artist at the Auckland and Canterbury museums, and co-curated the first major exhibition of Kiwiana (a term he helped invent). Richard lives with his artist wife Pamela in Auckland.

Publication Date: 12 October 2022 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004220-1 |  RRP $45

Paperback, 250 x 185 mm portrait, 184 pages, b/w with colour sections

New picture book The Water Bottle honours the Turkish-New Zealand bond forged at Gallipoli

The Water Bottle

Philippa Werry, illustrated by Burak Akbay

Kiwi author and Turkish illustrator join to create children’s book that fosters the bond forged at Gallipoli

It’s cause for hope when countries that were at war can transcend that enmity, even when separated by thousands of kilometres.

That is what New Zealand and Turkey share — a deep friendship that is commemorated each 25 April on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

The Water Bottle not only celebrates that friendship but was born from it — with Kiwi children’s author Philippa Werry working across the globe with Turkish illustrator Burak Akbay to tell a tale that crosses the Gallipoli trenches. 

Young girl Derya and her family move from Turkey to live in New Zealand. Among the heirlooms they bring with them is the water bottle that an Anzac soldier gave her great-grandfather after he had been wounded from Gallipoli.

At school she learns that her classmate Tom had a great-great-uncle who fought at Gallipoli. 

Together with their friend Airini they  learn about the war, attend an Anzac Day ceremony, then come home to make Anzac biscuits with Tom’s mum. 

‘Look at the three of us,’ Airini says. ‘Many years ago our families fought each other, but now we can be friends.

The Water Bottle was created between Turkey and New Zealand via email, Zoom and file sharing. 

Oratia Books in Auckland thanks Philippa and Burak for their amazing work; Göksun Bayraktar and Nazlı Gürkaş of The Black Cat Agency, Istanbul, who shared the initial idea and made it happen; and author Christopher Pugsley for his advice.

The Authors

Philippa Werry is an award-winning author of books for children, both fiction and non-fiction. She is well known for history books including Anzac Day and Best Mates. She lives with her family in Wellington (see https://philippawerry.co.nz). 

Burak Akbay is a prominent illustrator and designer of children’s books who lives in Istanbul, Turkey. From his origins in creating comic fanzines, he now illustrates books full-time and loves comics, graphic novels and film noir.

Publication Date: 5 April 2022 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004215-7 |  RRP $22.99

Paperback, 270 x 210 mm portrait, 32 pages colour

The Battlecruiser New Zealand — ‘biography’ of the ship that defined New Zealand's imperial past

The Battlecruiser New Zealand: A Gift to Empire

Matthew Wright

HMS New Zealand is arguably the most famous ship ever to serve the country, even though it was under Royal Navy colours.

 

It has hitherto featured only in general naval histories, so this classy hardback fills in an often-overlooked chapter in the nation’s story. 

 

In March 1909 New Zealand’s Premier Joseph Ward offered a ‘first-class battleship’ to the British Navy as a contribution to the Empire (and to guard against the perceived threat of a newly rising Japan). 

Paid for by the people of New Zealand it entered service in time to fight with distinction in the North Sea naval battles of the First World War. 

 

Born of the collision between New Zealand’s patriotic dreams and European politics, the tale of HMS New Zealand is further wrapped in issues of engineering, naval strategy and public opinion. 

The Battlecruiser New Zealand is a fast-paced account of the ship’s career, brought to life through official documents, eyewitness accounts and new research. Kiwi historian Matthew Wright tells the story as part naval history and part ‘biography’ of the vessel and its sailors.

The result is an elegant hardback, filled with illustrations of the ship during its lifespan — from construction to its triumphant world tour, service in battle and final dismantling for scrap in 1923.

Included is a colour section featuring the ship's construction plans and paintings of its action in the First World War.

Oratia Books is proud to publish this history in a coedition with Seaforth Publishing, UK, one of the world’s premiere  publishers of maritime books. 

The author

Matthew Wright is the author of over 60 books on a wide range of topics for all ages, principally New Zealand history. A highly respected historian, he is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His other books with Oratia are The New Zealand Wars, Freyberg — A Life’s Journey and The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front. He lives in Wellington.

Publication: 16 November 2021  |  RRP $59.99  |  ISBN:  978-1-526784-0-32 

Hardback, 234 x 156 mm, 288 pages, b&w with colour section

New biography sheds light on the private side of the legendary Bernard Freyberg

Freyberg: A Life’s Journey

Matthew Wright

Biography out tomorrow (6 October) focuses on Bernard Freyberg the man to reveal the reality behind a towering 20^th-century hero

The name Freyberg appears all across New Zealand, in streets, parks, schools, buildings, public spaces, pools and more. 

For much of the 20th century Bernard Freyberg was a household name: a swimming champion, an action-hero, military commander and Governor-General —a physically imposing figure known to most Kiwis as ‘Tiny’, following his childhood nickname. 

 

Freyberg receiving support as he attempts to swim the English Channel

Now in this new, concise biography, prolific author Matthew Wright reveals the complex man behind the myth for 21^st-century readers less familiar with Freyberg — tracking his personal journey from lower middle-class Wellington to his death in London as Lieutenant General The Right Hon. Lord Freyberg. 

Bernard Freyberg with son Paul during the Allied advance in Italy, 1944 

Who was this man, who presented initially as innocent and vague, yet showed a sharp intellect to those who knew him? How much of his action-hero status came from an effort to validate himself? 

Being sworn in as Governor-General, 1946

Why was he so ferociously private he did not even have a photographer at his own wedding? Why did he try to keep his 1914 adventures during the Mexico Revolution secret to the point of having his biographies censored?

Freyberg Beach, Wellington – one of many places named after the man

Freyberg: A Life’s Journey is the most accessible and revealing  Freyberg biography yet, with numerous photos. 

 

The author

Matthew Wright is one of New Zealand’s most published historians and writers. His work includes more than 600 articles, papers and reviews, and over 60 books on topics from biography to military and social history. His other Oratia books are The New Zealand Wars (2014) and The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front (2017) (see matthewwright.net).

Publication: 6 October 2020  |  ISBN: 978-0-947506-72-8  | RRP $45.00

Paperback with flaps, 234 x 153 mm portrait, 232 pages, b&w