Earlier this year, as part of Puffin’s upcoming 80th Anniversary Celebrations, Penguin Random House NZ offered to fund bookseller initiatives to get kids reading, to the value of $5000 each.
We received some amazing entries from booksellers all over New Zealand.
Carrie Welch, director of PRHNZ, said ‘the quality of entries received was overwhelmingly impressive. The initiatives and programmes proposed showed a clear commitment by our wonderful booksellers to not only improve children’s literacy at a grass roots level within local communities, but across Aotearoa as a whole.’
Entries were judged by a small panel of PRHNZ staffers, with help from formidable guest judges—Sapling contributor Thalia Kehoe Rowden, and authors Heather Haylock and Ant Sang.
And now *drumroll* without further ado, we’re delighted to announce the recipients of the Puffin Bookseller Grants!
Congratulations to . . .
The Children’s Bookshop (Wellington) presented a plan to run reader programmes in teenage parent units in the Wellington region. Our judging panel especially loved how this idea has the potential to impact not just one, but two generations of readers!
UBS Canterbury came up with an initiative to cleverly target struggling readers, primarily by providing resources to support RTLBs working in schools. Our judges were struck by the originality of this proposal and super impressed at the initiative UBS took in funding their own trial run of the initiative.
Another bookseller who ran trials of their idea before applying for funding was Masterton Paper Plus. Their initiative aimed to reach young readers (and their families) in a rural community by running a series of carefully planned literacy nights. Our judges were particularly impressed by the genuine passion for creating readers demonstrated in this application.
Time Out Bookstore’s (Auckland) application described a reading challenge with a difference! Aimed at local schools and with an emphasis on making books accessible to children in ‘bookless’ homes, we were impressed by the thoughtfulness of this idea and the simple but targeted approach outlined in the application.
Funds will be distributed to recipients in June and we’ll be aiming to provide updates on the initiatives as they roll out.
Watch this space!!
The Space Between by Lauren Keenan has won Best Adult Fiction Book at the 2025 NZ Booklovers Awards.
Mum's Busy Work by Jacinda Ardern is set for international release on September 30, 2025.
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are the country’s premier literary honours for books written by New Zealanders.
See the Penguin Random House NZ books shortlisted for the 2025 NZ Booklovers Awards
The longlists for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards have been announced.
A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern is set for international release on June 3, 2025.
Three outstanding New Zealand writers recognised with the 2024 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement
He is the first author to have ever won both the Booker Prize and Baillie Gifford Prize.
Compact yet beautifully expansive, Orbital invites us to observe Earth’s splendour, whilst reflecting on the individual and collective value of every human life.
Applications are open for the 2025 Penguin Random House Māori and Pacific Publishing Scholarship.
The 2024 Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) Book Design Awards celebrated a night of artistic brilliance, with Māori and Pasifika designers dominating the stage and Penguin Random House celebrating two wins.
The shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize has been announced, with three Penguin Random House titles named this year.