Annie and Moon / Ko Annie rāua ko Marama

Lesley Moyes is the author and illustrator of several children’s books produced between 1980 and 1997, featuring her intricate and delicately coloured watercolour and ink illustrations. Alphabet Apartments (1997), which she both wrote and illustrated, is a super-sized alphabet adventure that entranced children with its highly detailed scenes of a robber chased from apartment building to apartment building. Lesley also notably illustrated Miriam Smith’s Annie and Moon (1998), which won the Picture Book of the Year Award 1989. She also illustrated a number of educational readers. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

Miriam Smith 1926-1987 (Ngāti Hau, Ngāpuhi) was a writer and preschool adviser who was born in Whakapara, Bay of Islands, and raised and educated in Otane, Hawke's Bay. She wrote several children’s books including Kimi and the Watermelon, Annie and Moon, and Rehutai and Tangitangi. She was an advocate for teaching te reo Māori to all children, and her books reflect Māori values of caring for each other and the land. Described by her daughter Briar Grace Smith as having a “big heart”, Miriam’s manaaki and love for storytelling lives on in the pages of her books.