In the fourth book in Megan McKean’s Hello…! series, we’re heading to New Zealand for a new look-and-find adventure in this fabulous new picture book Hello, New Zealand!
The book invites us to come on an adventure-filled trip around the land of the long white cloud and it’s certainly a trip worth taking. Starting in the north of the North Island and travelling down south, we visit the places and sights of Aotearoa helped by our six kiwi guides – the brown kiwis.
From the sand dunes in the north, home of Tane Mahuta and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, we travel down to Auckland the city of sails and west coast black beaches of volcanic rock and iron sand. Hamilton features with Hobbiton and the magical glow worm caves of Waitomo. We visit our geo-thermal wonderland Rotorua renowned for its Maori cultural experiences.
We learn Taupo’s lake is in the crater of an extinct volcano, and Tongariro National Park is home to some of our native birds. Napier is not just our Art Deco mecca but also has the National Aquarium of NZ. On we continue to Wellington our capital city where we can visit our National Museum Te Papa and ride a cable car up to Zealandia an eco-sanctuary for native birds and bugs!
We cross Cook Strait past dolphins and big birds heading south to the most English city outside of England, Christchurch. With punting and cable cars, the Trans Alpine train and the International Antarctic Centre. Queenstown’s abuzz with snow boarding, sky diving and bungy jumping with the grand mountain ranges The Remarkables as the back drop! Milford Sound is where you’ll meet more wildlife and native birds.. and do you know what a fiord is? Dunedin the Edinburgh of NZ is home to the Royal Albatross Centre. Finally Invercargill the worlds southernmost city, is where you can catch a ferry to Stewart Island or if you’re lucky catch sight of the lights of the aurora australis.
You’ll learn about our native birds and wildlife along the way. Who knew we had so many big & ancient things in little old NZ?! A colossal squid at Te Papa, the Tuatara the most ancient of living reptiles, the biggest seabirds in the world, so not just home to the now extinct big Moa bird, and incidentally did you hear about the fossil discovery in NZ of a human sized penguin!
What a magnificent place NZ is! It won’t just be the kids learning a thing or two about our Godzone and its delightful towns and cities, the whole family will be triggered. Get ready to feel heavily influenced. Influenced to start making a NZ bucket list of all the places and sights to see on future family roadies, your future trips will flash before your eyes. If Invercargill wasn’t on your bucket list at the beginning of the book it could perhaps be by the end of it!
Megan McKean has done a fabulous job taking us on a virtual tour of NZ with a bunch of brown kiwis. She brings our cities and sights to life with her distinct, colourful and engaging illustrations. She ignites a spark of curiosity and keen-ness to make your next trip domestic through the sights, sounds, smells, and friendly native residents of Aotearoa from kea to tui.
You will love this book!
How many of these New Zealand sights have you seen?
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Written by Ronnie Swainston
Online Producer & Experiences Editor Ronnie is mum to two spirited kids who keep her on her toes. With a love for travel, film, tv, photography & (eating) food keeping her wishing for more time, & having a keen curiosity means she’ll give almost anything a go making her, and her family, up for the job!
Favourite place to be: On an adventure
What a neat book, not only as a gift for our visitors to NZ or for friends overseas, but for our own children and family living in NZ that aren’t fortunate enough to be able to travel to those exciting places! Awesome!
What a cool book to have and invest in. This might be for me as well. I haven’t really visited much of New Zealand yet but excited to be able to with my 4 year old son.
My family have been fortunate enough to have visited all these beautiful places and all the in betweens as we have lived between both islands and taken our kids exploring around NZ to show them their beautiful country, we are now currently all the way down south in invercargill. One day we do hope to be able to do another road trip around as we love checking out the sights.
Awesome book!! My 6 year old would love this book, she is an avid reader. Great pictures and facts about different parts of NZ. We really haven’t done much travelling or sightseeing at all, due to work and budget unfortunately, but would love to do a road trip in a campervan or similar to see some sights of NZ 🙂
Wowee this Sounds like an amazing book for children to get to know their country more in depth. What a great way to tell a story. We’ve been to Te papa, Christchurch, Dunedin, Queenstown and Invercargil. And we are Lucky enough to be heading off to Auckland the first weekend after school holidays for a family journey to Auckland zoo as we’ve never been for a stay in Auckland which means plane ride etc. The kids are super excited even mum and dad are too.
We have been to a few places so far.Dunedin, Te Papa, Queenstown, Antarctic centre too but been a few years since we have been… will need to take the kids… alot more to explore in this beautiful country…
We have not seen many sights this book sounds great to read and take the kids on a road trip we plan to do one day it’s just the kids get very car sick. I have been to Te Papa and Dunedin, Christchurch but that’s about all.