Mother's Day Memories: Penguin Authors

Books are meant to be cherished, shared, and to create connections. This Mother's Day, we are celebrating the timeless legacy of stories and their enduring impact across generations. We asked some of our authors to share memories of reading with their Mums...

Dr Hinemoa Elder, author of Aroha

Closing my eyes, I can still hear the memory of Mum’s voice. Warm and chocolatey. Bringing every word to life. She loved to make the words dance, just like her passion for rock ‘n’ roll. It chokes me up to think of it now. Sitting forward in the chair, a big hardback book, open on her lap. Mum did all the characters voices. Me and my little brother Maru would laugh out loud, one minute quirky the next, mock serious. Mum got so involved with every twist and turn of the story. I loved the way she would look up from the page at key moments. Catching my eye from her place in the corner of the bedroom, me all snuggled up in the cosy muddle of sheets and blankets, my brother on the other side of the room. She would hold a pause, suspended in the air and we would gasp. Mum always ended on a cliff hanger moment. We would be begging for more. But no, we knew when she said we could find out more tomorrow night, she meant it. And we secretly relished the knowledge that tomorrow she would take us back to the magic world of words and imagination.

One Thousand and One Nights was our favourite series of books. Dad used to go to the auction rooms and come home with old books, and these were one treasure haul. They still stand sentinel on the shelf, patiently waiting to be opened again. Scheherazade, and her thousand and one nights of stories. Words weaving tales of life and death. Mum brought to life the urgency and importance of every sentence. It doesn’t escape me now that these were the stories read by our Mum, as told by a woman to protect other women from harm.

Mum passed on her reading aroha to me. I loved reading to our kids when they were young, and sometimes they let me read to them even now. I marvel at the way Mum would always be there to read to us.  She was a busy schoolteacher as well as being our Mum, she sometimes played indoor netball, as it was called back then, pretty fiercely too. The chaos of modern life seems to make reading at bedtime so much more difficult for parents and caregivers, and of course the powerful pull of electronic devices play their part. I can’t help longing for those earlier times when being read to was something that was simply part of our daily routine. I wonder what sacrifices she made to make sure she was always there with her reading aroha flowing. Now I realise how very fortunate I am to still hear the echoes of Mum’s voice when I remember her expression of aroha in reading to us kids.

Louise Ward, author of The Bookshop Detectives Tea and Cake and Death

My mum, Vonnie, was a big reader. I can see her, glossy dark hair in rollers, sitting in her armchair in our wee house in Nottinghamshire. Dad had a record player in his corner of the living room, and in hers Vonnie had a little bookcase with a secret drawer in the bottom for the rates, mortgage and groceries tin. The two shelves were full of Readers’ Digest condensed editions and the latest Catherine Cookson or Maeve Binchy from the library. She’d sit in that chair, a Dry Martini with a splash of lemonade (no ice) on the go, and she couldn’t be reached whilst immersed in the scandalous escapades of Tilly Trotter, or out roaming the streets of Dublin with Maeve.

I remember her reading to me at bedtime when I was very small. I don’t recall the stories as much as having my busy mum all to myself for a bit, and trying to get her to read another, then just one more. When she was a very old lady, navigating the dark tunnels of dementia, I would read aloud to her, any old thing I found in my bag, in the residents’ lounge, or left in her room by a wandering neighbour. Before she got too tired, we would find each for a while, and it was lovely to have her all to myself again.

Liv Sisson, author of Fungi of Aotearoa

Many of my earliest memories are my mom, Melanie, reading aloud to me. I remember her soothing narration of Goodnight Moon, the shimmery pages of The Rainbow Fish, and the joy of reading Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day together when it was, in fact, snowing just outside our window.

Mom read aloud with me at night until high school. Dad also joined in regularly, too. I think we only stopped because my homework load started to get in the way. In the early years we loved the Ramona series by Beverley Clearly and Captain Underpants. In my middle school years, we read the entire Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. My mom would sit on the floor beneath my bed and ask me to brush her hair as she read. If I stopped brushing, she'd stop reading.

After college I read all of Barbara Kingsolver's books – A Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer are two of my favourites. I found out later that mom had done the same thing when she was pregnant with me.

We recently started a book club that's just us two. I live in New Zealand and my mom lives in Virginia, where I grew up, so it's a nice way to stay in touch. We started with Greek Lessons by Han Kang and both agreed it is very beautiful. Now we're reading Barrel Fever – David Sedaris' first book from 1995. Mom introduced me to Sedaris' hilarious work and took me to see him read live when I was in high school. She showed me the joy of following particular writers through time. She is also a fantastic and funny writer herself. I adore the letters she sends me that contain little snippets of stories, funny vignettes from her everyday. 

Diana Wichtel, author of Unreel

One book Mum made a point of reading to me even when I could read by myself: The Adventures of Hutu and Kawa. Avis Acre’s unthreatening adventures of two chubby Pōhutukawa babies travelled to Vancouver by sea from a mythical place called New Zealand, where resided unknown quantities called “Nana” and “Aunty Alma”.

Mum also delivered the first hot rush of an Enid Blyton addiction via Be Brave Little Noddy. Jingle-jingle, parp-parp. Blyton’s Adventure series would become my mood-altering substance of choice. The Castle of Adventure, The Circus of Adventure… The obligatory gang of feral children, plus a parrot called Kiki: I must have given them a good review because Mum started reading them in my wake, beginning our entwined, sometimes clandestine literary relationship. I sneaked her copy of Leon Uris’s Exodus and learned about the concentration camps where Dad’s family were murdered. In Auckland - I was 13 and mum was flying solo - I discovered Errol Flynn’s racy memoir, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, under her lonely mattress. She read Jane Austen, with me hot on her heels. Later I would pass onto her my beloved The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The other day, culling books busy overtaking our house, there was The Small Garden by John Brookes. I gave it to Mum one Mother’s Day when her home had become a unit with a small courtyard. Mum still managed to grow hydrangeas and fuchsias, mint and tomatoes, silverbeet, parsley and lettuce. I’m not much of a gardener and she is gone but I’m hanging onto it.

Graci Kim, author of Dreamslinger

Like many immigrant families, my mum worked hard and tirelessly for the hope of a better future. With three back-to-back jobs around the clock, my two little sisters and I were often in bed by the time she got home. But some evenings were rare treasures. She’d come home with exhaustion etched around her eyes, only to gather us into her bed. We’d burrow under the blankets, three little bodies pressed against her sides, our heads tilted up in anticipation.

She’d grab one of the Korean folktale books on the shelf, and her voice would transform as she recited spooky tales about a toilet ghost who asked if you wanted the red toilet paper or the blue; or about the dokkaebi, the cheeky Korean goblins that challenged unwary children to wrestling matches they could never win. The poky bedroom would disappear, only to be replaced by shadowy bathrooms and moonlit crossroads where goblins waited.

I remember the way we would squeal with delight at her dramatic pauses, and how my youngest sister would bury her face against Mum’s shoulder at the scariest parts. I, as the eldest, tried to appear brave despite the goosebumps racing along my arms, and pretended the elaborate rituals I’d adopt in the coming weeks to avoid using the bathroom (who wanted to meet a colour-obsessed toilet paper ghost anyway?) had nothing to do with these tales.

Yet strangely, these moments of delicious fear became anchors in my memory. In those precious slivers of time, she gave us something priceless—her undivided attention. Even now, many decades later, I sometimes hesitate before the bathroom mirror at night, half-expecting to be asked that fateful question about toilet paper, and feeling, in that moment, my mother's arms around me once again.