What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than Unity’s top-selling kids’ books.

AUCKLAND

1  Maui & Other Legends by Peter Gossage (Penguin, $40, 2+)

Greatest hits.

2  The Rock From the Sky by John Klassen (Walker Books, $30, 2+)

Huge rocks keep falling from the sky, nearly squashing a weird little turtle guy and a weird little armadillo guy. They exist in some kind of moonscape. There are giant walking eyes that shoot killer lasers. It works because the ideas are completely hectic but the execution is completely calm and matter of fact.

Read this triumph of a picture book and your kids, like ours, will soon be happily bellowing “I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I’M GOING TO COME CLOSER!” And you’ll be happily bellowing back.

3  How Do I Feel? A Dictionary of Emotions for Children by Rebekah Lipp & Craig Phillips (Wildling Books, $40, 5+)

A big bright hardback, highly recommended by child psychologists and by us.

4  Wonder by RJ Palacio (Corgi Books, $23, 9+)

Critically acclaimed and a bestseller since it was published 10 years ago, this is a novel about a boy with a facial disfigurement enduring the social dynamics of school for the first time.

5  The Adventures of Tupaia by Courtney Sina Meredith and Mat Tait (Allen & Unwin, $35, 6+)

From a piece we published when this book came out in 2019:

“The cover tells the story. Stars everywhere. Palm trees in silhouette. And two figures: there’s Tupaia in the foreground, eyes shining, arm raised, pointing the way, generally looking magnificent. And there’s Captain James Cook positioned further back – and therefore smaller – all buttons and britches, clunky old compass lowered as he looks to Tupaia, instead, for guidance.”

6  The Memory of Babel by Christelle Dabos (Text Publishing, $26, YA)

Book three of The Mirror Visitor quartet, set in a blown-to-bits world where society is split across floating celestial “arks” of rock.

7  Counting Creatures by Julia Donaldson and Sharon King-Chai (Two Hoots, $30, 1+)

Far out, we just watched a video flick-through of this book and it looks amazing – gorgeous illustrations, very cool lift-the-flaps and that Julia Donaldson parrumpa pum rhythm. Plus animal babies! Can’t go wrong.

8  Curious Creatures Glowing in the Dark by Zoe Armstrong and Anja Susanj (Flying Eye Books, $33, 3+)

9  Under the Love Umbrella by Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys (Scribble Books, $23, 1+)

We are here for anything Davina Bell wants to give us. Please see also the excellent picture book Hattie Helps Out, and the superb YA The End of the World is Bigger Than Love.

10  The Midnight Adventures of Ruru and Kiwi by Clare Scott and Amy Haarhoff (Picture Puffin, $20, 2+)

Lovely illustrations and cute concept – it’s a riff on the owl and the pussycat – but we wish the words better fit the beat of the original poem. It’s a hard one to read aloud.

WELLINGTON

1  Brightest Night by Tui T Sutherland (Scholastic, $22, 9+)

More dragons, from the author of the Wings of Fire series. (Sutherland’s not from here, btw, but her mum is, hence “Tui”.)

2  Amorangi and Millie’s Trip Through Time by Lauren Keenan (Huia, $26, 10+)

We’ve just started reading this and it’s wonderful. No surprise there – Huia is the best in the children’s book business, right now.

3  Tim Te Maro & the Subterranean Heartsick Blues by HS Valley (Hardie Grant, $23, 12+)

A really great low-stakes happy queer YA, set in a school of magic under Fox Glacier. Sam Brooks interviewed the author for us, and she said:

“It was born of my love of tropes and Draco Malfoy … I wanted to use magic, because I like magic and everybody needs a bit of escapism.

“I figured if there was magic in New Zealand, everybody would be real cash [casual] about it. It’s New Zealand – even if people had it, they’d be like ‘yeah whatever’ and if they didn’t have it, they’d be like ‘yeah but it’s not that cool’.”

4  Atua: Māori Gods & Heroes by Gavin Bishop (Penguin, $40, all ages)

Buy the kids Atua and the grownups Kurangaituku and everyone’ll be wildly chuffed.

5  The Boy, the Mole, the Fox & the Horse by Charlie Makesy (Ebury, $40, all ages)

Still!

6  One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus (Puffin, $21, 13+)

Five students walk into detention, only four come out alive. It’s on Netflix.

7  The Adventures of Mittens: Wellington’s Famous Purr-Sonality by Silvio Bruisma (Penguin, $20, 2+)

Let us give thanks that Mittens was well out of Wellington before it became protest central. (Don’t worry, he hasn’t “gone to the farm”, he moved to Auckland. With his family. Not just, like, him on a whim.)

8  The Storm of Echoes by Christelle Dabos (Text, $26, 12+)

Book four of the Mirror Visitor quartet.

9  Skinny Dip: Poetry edited by Susan Paris and Kate De Goldi (Annual Ink, $30, 13+)

All the poems in this eclectic little collection are school-adjacent. We published a couple at the start of term four last year, for the kids of Auckland and Northland who were still stuck at home.

10  If I Had A Dinosaur by Gabby Dawney and Alex Barrow (Thames & Hudson, $16, 2+)

Very good. Click here and Eddie Redmayne will read it to you.