Pātea Boys

by Airana Ngarewa

From the bestselling author of The Bone Tree comes a lively and playful bilingual collection of stories about growing up in Pātea.

Interlinked and full of recurring characters, these stories are about growing up in small-town Aotearoa - sneaking away during cross country or doing bombs while the lifeguard isn't looking. The collection is designed to bridge a gap between children's books in te reo and full-length literary works. With each story featured in both English and te reo Māori, it's the perfect resource for those on their reo learning journeys as well as for readers who enjoyed The Bone Tree.

Genres: Fiction

243 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 27, 2024

Reviews

[Laura Currie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as NZ fiction goes, this is pretty good. It is a series of short stories that take place in Pātea. Some stories have some cross-over, others build on previous and others are stand alone. This will be great for teaching in NZ. The stories are told from Māori perspective and cover key māori concepts/values, tikanga, atua (gods), and touches on the impact colonisation has had. It also has a great range of descriptive language (particularly similes), which will be great when teaching unfamiliar text! The whole book is only 140 pages and the other half is written in Te Reo Māori!

Personal favourites were:
- Bombs for the bros
- Cross Country
- The Pā is a lonely place
- Lost and Found

[Jonathon Hagger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kei te pai te pukapuka! A really good read with a ton of fun and interesting stories. A little too short and needed to be lengthened out but otherwise really brilliant.

[Zachary Ngow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tales of Pātea, mostly boyhood, told in a sweet compassionate, casual manner. They are linked by reappearing characters, and by Pātea itself. Most are tales told by or of children about things that happened to them or that they get up to. Mixed in are more unusual ones like the discovery of a waka told by a waka. There are some darker moments, like the Native Supergirl story, but mostly it's quite cheerful. My favourite was the story about Grub, a little girl who becomes Mahuika and fights a battle of wills against her two sisters who take on the form of Maui. Others favourites were Cross Country, A Casket Made of Flax and the Pātea Māori Club. This collection shows how legendary Pātea is.

Some of the word choices annoyed me slightly, frickin for example (a little unbelievable that everyone wouldn't swear properly), but I suppose the aim with this book was to cater for a wide audience?

This is only half a review as I can only read the English side. I'd like to come back to it one day when (if) I learn Te Reo. This book can be used as a Reo learning tool, though flipping back and forth upside down might be a bit difficult.

[Maddy McGee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It wasn’t what I thought because I obviously hadn’t read the blurb properly but each chapter was awesome. The characters so real, and so funny and interesting. I loved that each chapter brought me something new but that I could ‘see’ the other characters in the background. A loving look at Māori culture and wonderful writing as an author from a youths perspective, they captured their energy, thoughts and behaviours so well. Could easily read again.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

" Honey couldn't recall it all perfectly. She didn't have the loved experience to make it all make sense, not the ability to speak through her tears as her emotions overcame her." Stuff the Stuffing

[Roimata Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the collection of short stories in this novel!
The way that they were little moments from a group of friends and the stories would shape and mold around them.
Even though they were their own stories, and you could start anywhere, It was nice having characters from the other stories popping up.
There were a few times where I could relate, from running your heart out in cross country, to helping out in the kitchen at the marae.

The thing that I really loved about this book though was that it was written in Te Reo Māori and then when you flipped the book there was the English text on the other side!

[Brady Hamed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best read over the course of a lazy end of summer day in New Zealand. Reads like the best of my fave end of summer movie Breaking Away, but for the te reo crowd. Some of the stories are great - Cross Country, Five Times I Almost Died Before I Turned Fifteen, Lost and Found - the standouts. Gives you a sense of how we live now, the working middle class you don’t always think of. Extra bonus points for throwing an uninitiated reader (me) into the deep end with te reo language scattered throughout - while I didn’t always know the words, I usually figured it out and respected the inaccessibility - it’s not the books job to explain to me everything! I can research what I don’t know! And a neat bit with the book printed in two languages - I hope the book in translation crowd have a field day. But it is thematically relevant. And makes you feel like you’ve read a whole book when it’s really just half!

[Bathsheba Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book hit close to home. Growing up in Pātea, there was a constant sense of recognition in the pages, places, people, and especially the small-town dynamics that everyone knows but rarely says out loud. The dramas, grudges, loyalties, and quiet kindnesses felt familiar in a way that only comes from lived experience of growing up Pātea styles.

What really stood out was how well the author captured the rhythm of a small town: the way stories linger, how reputations stick, and how everyone is connected whether they want to be or not. It’s not romanticised, but it is honest, and that honesty carries a lot of weight.

While not every moment landed equally for me, the emotional truth and sense of place were strong throughout. For anyone who grew up in Pātea itself, there’s a powerful layer of nostalgia and recognition woven in for me making this an easy 4 stars 🌟

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting look into growing up in a small country town - even one as famous as Patea - in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The author, Airana Ngarewa has woven a wonderful array of characters, many of whom appear as the key character in one chapter, and a minor character in another. The woven stories show how people's lives intersect.
The book is in English at one end, and in Te Reo Maori at the other; a great resource for practising reading and vocabulary building.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of interconnected short stories set in the remote coastal settlement of Pātea in the North Island, capturing life in the town through the eyes of a small group of young boys and a few girls. Peeling potatoes for a tangi, manuing into the local pool or listening to Poi E on repeat, these stories are deceptively simple, timeless and beautiful

[Lorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed these stories and the uniquely kiwi voice.

[Deina Susilo-Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and sweet!!! Vibrant characters who all feel familiar

[Theo McNeill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good book, quite easy read, nice break from my current read(Crime and Punishment.) Highly reccomend for everyone, although, people with limited Māori may struggle with terms/slang

[Mitch MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

He tino pai rawa rawa atu tēnei pukapuka. Tū mai Taranaki!

[Philly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed Lost and found, and Grand Theft Auto short stories

[Duchesne Markham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was deliciously nostalgic and so lovely to read about people growing up in the region I grew up in. My favourite story was the one about the waka being discovered in the mud flats, told from the perspective of the waka. Despite this I found the book pretty easy to put down and found myself reading it between other books in short stints over months and months. I read it on my kindle and I didn’t realise the second half was the book repeated in te reo Maori (which is amazing) so I was so disappointed when the book ended. I was expecting so much more to read!