Nine Girls
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  • Published: 4 April 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241685259
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

Nine Girls

Formats & editions
Paperback
26 Mar 2024
EBook
4 Apr 2024
EBook
26 Mar 2024
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A funny, moving and epic adventure set in 1970s New Zealand from the bestselling author of Pony Club Secrets

They dug a hole right there on our farm on the bank of the Mangawara and they put the box filled with gold inside it and covered it with dirt. And to keep the gold safe until they could return one of them placed a tapu on it. A tapu so that anyone who tried to touch the gold before they could come back for it would die.

Titch is determined to find the gold hidden somewhere on her family's farm. It might be tapu but that won't put her off.

Her dad has gone bankrupt, and she has had to leave her home in the city and move back with her family to smalltown Ngaruawahia, start a new school and find new friends. Could the hidden gold be the way to fix her family's money problems?

Titch, her cousins and new friend Tania set out to find the gold. But an unexpected encounter with a creature from the nearby river sees Titch learn about her own Maori heritage and the dangers of messing with tapu.

A fascinating insight into Maori legend and culture, Nine Girls is a page-turning adventure that shows what it's like to feel like an outsider in our own world.

Winner of the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award at the 2024 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults!
  • Published: 4 April 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241685259
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
Categories:

About the author

Stacy Gregg

Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta/Ngāti Pukeko/Ngāti Maru) grew up in Ngāruawāhia, the small but culturally significant town where Nine Girls, her multiple-award-winning children’s novel, is set.

Stacy's first book with Penguin Random House UK/NZ, Nine Girls takes place in the socially tumultuous late seventies and early eighties in New Zealand and won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award and the Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2024. It is written for a readership of 10 –13 years but holds just as much appeal for adult audiences, exploring similar themes to her 2022 essay published in The Spinoff, ‘The Māoris From the Town Side of the River’, which won a New Zealand Voyager Journalism Award in 2023.

Stacy has previously published 32 middle-grade fiction novels with HarperCollins UK and remains HarperCollins New Zealand’s third best-selling children’s author of all-time, after David Walliams and Dr Seuss. Her Pony Club Secrets series has sold over 1.5 million copies globally in English alone and later became the CBBC TV series Mystic, which ran for three seasons.
Stacy's second series Pony Club Rivals continued to define and dominate pony genre fiction before she moved into stand-alone hardbacks.

The first of these, The Princess and the Foal, released in 2013 and was based on the true-life story of Princess Haya of Jordan, written with the blessing of HRH. Stacy travelled to the royal palaces and stables of Jordan for research and since then has travelled to Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Russia and Iceland to research her novels.

Before her winning sweep in the national book awards, Stacy has been eight times a finalist and a consecutive three-time winner of the Children’s Choice Award. She has also twice won TV's WhatNow Children’s Choice Award for middle-grade fiction.

Stacy's other titles for younger readers include the junior fiction series, Spellbound Ponies, the picture books In or Out and The Easter Bunny Hunt for HarperCollins UK, and the popular Mini Whinny series for Scholastic.

Her screenwriting credits include Mystic and the Acorn TV series, My Life Is Murder, starring Xena Warrior Princess's Lucy Lawless.

She lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

portrait photo of Stacy Gregg

Praise for Nine Girls

As she tries to get to grips with her new life, Titch finds that this is a place filled with secrets and lies. She’s dazzled by tales of hidden gold buried on whānau land and becomes determined to find it. But the real treasure is the story of her family’s past and the magical river creature that guides her towards it.

New Zealand Women's Weekly

A beautiful snapshot of New Zealand through the eyes of a young girl discovering more about her whakapapa and iwi. A fantastic Read Aloud for the classroom too.

Adele Broadbent, What Book Next

Awards & recognition

New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults

Winner  •  2024  •  Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction

New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults

Winner  •  2024  •  Margaret Mahy Book of the Year

Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Award

Awarded  •  2024  •  A Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Book

NZ Booklovers Award

Shortlisted  •  2025  •  NZ Booklovers Award for Best Junior Fiction Book

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Video
Nine Girls by Stacy Gregg

Nine Girls is a page-turning adventure from Stacy Gregg, one of Aotearoa’s most internationally successful and locally awarded writers. They dug a hole and they put the box filled with gold inside it. To keep it safe until they could return, one of them placed a tapu on it. A tapu so that anyone who tried to touch the gold would die. Titch is determined to find the gold buried somewhere on her family’s land. It might be cursed but that won’t put her off. Then an unexpected encounter with a creature from the river reveals secrets lying beneath its surface . . . As Titch uncovers the truth about the hidden treasure, she learns about her own heritage — and what it’s like to feel like an outsider in your own world. A story about growing up in a time of social unrest in early 1980s New Zealand, Nine Girls is a page-turning adventure woven with suspense from the author of Pony Club Secrets and The Princess and the Foal. https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/nine-girls-9781776958146