The Power of Place: Landscape in New Zealand Children’s Fiction, 1970-1989

Abstract

There have been few critical studies of New Zealand children’s literature, certainly few that treat it as literature rather than an occasion for social or educational discussion. So this book—by an author with extensive knowledge of the field—deserves a welcome. Having said that, my main feeling about it is one of disappointment.

In The Power of Place Diane Hebley charts the responses of New Zealand children’s writers, over a period of twenty years, to the local landscape. The main argument of the book is an interesting one—that writers have gained power in their fiction when they have drawn directly on the landscape’s often violent and spectacular nature.