Juliet Blyth
“Every Friday, after school, my best friend and I used to go the mobile library in Dunedin. I remember hauling my book bag home, sharing my finds with my mother – it was my greatest joy.
I’m a reader, former bookseller and now Chief Executive of Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Read NZ wants to embed reading for pleasure into the cultural life of New Zealanders because reading is a superpower, it feeds our imaginations and broadens our horizons. It’s accessible and affordable and there’s so much research on its benefits. One piece we keep coming back to identifies reading for pleasure as the single most important indicator of a child’s future success – even before socio-economic background. We also know the contribution reading makes when it comes to our mental well-being, and to building empathy, as well as to cross-cultural understanding. And that is just the beginning!
Having a great book to read is like a secret joy, it adds a dimension to my life that is missing when I don’t have one on the go. Over the years, I’ve read a large number of books by New Zealand authors, but recently I’ve made the decision to focus on, and talk about these much more. In 2020, when we went into lockdown, I read each of the books on the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards fiction shortlist: Auē, Pearly Gates, A Mistake, Halibut on the Moon – all four were amazing, I still think about them a lot. Right now, I’m reading Nina Mingya Powles’ small bodies of water. I love her writing, and her food memoir Tiny Moons: a year of eating in Shanghai is also wonderful. I’ve just finished Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly – between the characters, the domestic detail and all the Auckland landmarks, I felt like I was there in the book. I could have kept reading it forever and now that I’m not, I’m missing it. Next, I think, will be Patricia Grace’s memoir. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to pick it up.
New Zealand books are really good. They’re also grounding and provide a sense of place, a jolt of recognition. They’re relatable in their use of colloquialism too. They reflect New Zealand back to us and help us understand ourselves and each other, better. This year, Read NZ has been working with the Ministry of Education in five Pacific communities to write and publish their stories. These communities are rightfully proud to see their words on the page, they see themselves and we see them. It’s an example of how reading can improve cross-cultural understanding and the way stories celebrate and represent our cultures, communities, lives and languages.
There’s a connection too, between books and stories written here and the impact of our Writers in Schools programme. When authors go into schools, it inspires confidence and interest in writing and reading. Much of the school feedback we receive is linked to role modelling. When children hear the experiences of authors with backgrounds, interests and passions similar to theirs it can be a huge motivation. Our writers telling our stories to our children, inspiring them to pick up a book they wrote, and to keep reading? That’s the dream.”
Juliet Blyth is Chief Executive of Read NZ Te Pou Muramura