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  • Published: 3 October 2023
  • ISBN: 9781761048616
  • Imprint: Puffin
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 64
  • RRP: $40.00

Patu

The New Zealand Wars



A large-format, stunning visual history of the New Zealand Wars of the 1800s, suitable for children and adults, by the multiple-award-winning Gavin Bishop

Discover the key people, perspectives and battles of the New Zealand Wars in this award-winning, powerfully told and richly illustrated visual history by Gavin Bishop.

Auē! Te mamae!
Navigate the defining moments of the wars, visit the battle sites and explore the sweeping change that took place in Aotearoa during the 19th century.

Guiding readers through the bitter armed clashes over land and sovereignty, PATU is an essential book for every home, school and library.

A stunning large format hardback, complete with foldout maps of key pā, villages and battle sites, this is a book to engross children and adults, bringing to life a complex period of Aotearoa's past that has urgent relevance for our present and future.

  • Published: 3 October 2023
  • ISBN: 9781761048616
  • Imprint: Puffin
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 64
  • RRP: $40.00

About the author

Gavin Bishop

Gavin Bishop (Tainui, Ngāti Awa) is a highly acclaimed children’s book author and illustrator of more than 70 books, whose work ranges from original stories to retellings of Māori myths, European fairy stories, and nursery rhymes.

Born in Invercargill, he spent his childhood in the remote railway settlement of Kingston on the shores of Lake Wakatipu. Studying under Russell Clark and Rudi Gopas, Gavin graduated from the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts with an honours degree in painting. He taught art at Linwood High School and at Christ’s College in Christchurch.

Among the numerous fellowships and national book prizes that have been awarded to Gavin throughout his career, highlights are his Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement - Non-fiction in 2019; his Te Waka Toi Ngā Tohu ā Tā Kingi Ihaka/Sir Kingi Ihaka Award in 2018 recognising lifetime contribution to strengthening Māori art and culture through his children’s books; The Arts Foundation’s Mallinson Rendel Illustrators Award in 2013; and the 2000 Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal for lifetime achievement and his distinguished contribution to children’s literature in New Zealand. Gavin was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2013, and President of Honour of the NZ Society of Authors.

In 2024, PATU: The New Zealand Wars, a pictorial exploration of the conflicts that have shaped Aotearoa New Zealand and hold urgent relevance for today, won the Russell Clark Award for Illustration – a national award that Gavin has received 10 times.

He has won the supreme Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award a record five times - and most recently in 2022 with his ATUA: Māori Gods and Heroes, which also won the Elsie Locke Award for Non-fiction and the Russell Clark Award for Illustration. It was described as "an instant classic, a ‘must have’ for every Kiwi household and library" and “much more than a list of gods and legendary heroes – it’s a family tree, presented with power and simplicity. The text is never overstated, with the glory of the illustrations as the primary mode of storytelling, rewarding the reader who closely examines them.”
In 2018, his pictorial history through maps, Aotearoa: The New Zealand Story, won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award and the Elsie Locke Award for Non-fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. The judges praised it as being ‘masterful in its execution – a work of art that bears repeated and thoughtful viewing and reading of its vibrant and informative illustrations. It is also a book of enduring significance in the canon of New Zealand children’s literature – a landmark title which will stand the test of time.’ That same year, Aotearoa won a Storylines Notable Non-Fiction Award and Best Children’s Book at the PANZ Design Awards.

A companion volume, Wildlife of Aotearoa, was published in 2019. It won NZ Booklovers Best Children's Book Award and a Storylines Notable Non-fiction Award in 2020 and in 2022 was made an IBBY Honour Book for the quality of its illustrations.

In 2008 Snake and Lizard won both the Book of the Year Award and the Junior Fiction Award. It was written by the beloved author Joy Cowley and with the series of books that followed, was one of Gavin Bishop's most successful author-illustrator partnerships.

In 2003 Weaving Earth and Sky, a collaboration with writer Robert Sullivan, won the Book of the Year as well as the Best Non-fiction awards and was shortlisted for the LIANZA Elsie Locke Medal.

Mrs McGinty and the Bizarre Plant (1981); Kiwi Moon (2006); Rats! (2008); and There was a Crooked Man (2010) were all recipients of the Russell Clark Award. The judges of the 2006 award said, ‘Kiwi Moon has all the appeal and promise of a future folktale classic. It is an outstanding example of how text and illustrations can be interwoven to produce a marvellous whole.’

Other award-winning titles include: The Year of the Yelvertons (illustrator; the 1981 Esther Glen Medal); Mr Fox (Noma Concours 1984 Grand Prize); Hinepau (New Zealand Picture Book of the Year 1993); The House that Jack Built (Book of the Year and Best Picture Book at the 2000 NZ Post Book Awards); Friends: Snake and Lizard (with Joy Cowley, Children’s Choice Junior Fiction, 2010 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards); and Mister Whistler (written by Margaret Mahy, winning Best Picture Book at the 2013 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards).


Many of Gavin’s works have been listed as Storylines Notable Books, most recently Patu: The New Zealand Wars in 2023, Atua: Māori Gods and Heroes in 2022, Wildlife of Aotearoa in 2020; Aotearoa: The New Zealand Story in 2018; also Tom Thumb (2002); The Three Billy Goats Gruff (2004); Taming the Sun: Four Maori Myths (2005); Kiwi Moon (2006); The Waka (2006); Te Waka (2006); Riding the Waves: Four Maori Myths (2007); Snake & Lizard (2008); Rats! (2008); Piano Rock: A 1950s Childhood (2009); There Was a Crooked Man (2010); Cowshed Christmas (2010); Friends: Snake & Lizard (2010); Counting the Stars: Four Māori Myths (2010); and Teddy One Eye: The Autobiography of a Teddy Bear (2015).

Gavin’s artwork has featured in exhibitions internationally, including Japan and Czechoslovakia. He has written and designed two ballets for the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company: Terrible Tom and Te Maia and the Sea Devil. In 2003 he shared the Ursula Bethell Residency with Catherine Chidgey.

The Storylines Gavin Bishop Award for an Unpublished Illustrator was established in partnership with Storylines Children's Literature Trust in 2009. Sponsored by Penguin Random House New Zealand, it has the aim of encouraging emergent illustrators to try their hand at picture books and acknowledges Gavin’s contribution to the writing and illustrating of children’s picture books in this country. Through this award, Gavin has provided valuable mentorship and coaching to its recipients and helped launch new talent in children’s book creation.

Gavin lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand. See more about him and his work at www.gavinbishop.com.

Also by Gavin Bishop

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Praise for Patu

This is a book that will engross readers of all ages as it brings to life a period of Aotearoa's past. Bishop skillfully explores the complex narratives of New Zealand, weaving his own whakapapa into Patu. This inclusion is a subtle yet important one: Bishop highlights the reality so many of us have to balance, that within our own families the roles of colonised and coloniser both exist; how ordinary families were, and continue to be, affected by the events of the times.

Rebecca Lyell, NZ Booklovers

Simply put, this pukapuka is miiharo!

The School Library

We can’t move forward without acknowledging our past. Patu: The New Zealand Wars is [...] a resource for homes, kura, schools and libraries ready to take on the challenge of teaching something so integral to our history and long brushed under the covers...What amazed me most about Patu, other than the full-bodied and powerful art, was learning about Bishop’s tūpuna – his great-grandparents, Irihāpeti Te Paea Hahau Te Wherowhero, eldest daughter of King Te Wherowhero of Waikato, and John Horton McKay – and the impact of the wars on them and their descendants.

Ataria Sharman, The Spinoff

Gavin Bishop (Tainui, Ngāti Awa) delivers a powerful tale of the New Zealand Wars and the painful history of colonisation in Aotearoa.

The Sapling

[V]ery timely to read, or reread, to understand the history around The Treaty of Waitangi and the fighting and battles over land. It is written for children, but Patu covers all the major battles, what caused them, the outcome and who the major combatants were. Threaded throughout the histories of the battles is a story of the Mackay family...The reader will wonder why we are learning about them, and what important part they played in the New Zealand Wars. The end will be a surprise, but you will have to read it all to find out.

Gisborne Herald

Awards & recognition

Storylines Notable Book Award

Awarded  •  2023  •  Storylines Notable Non-fiction

New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults

Winner  •  2024  •  Russell Clark Award for Illustration

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