Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) is the 2024 winner of the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year with her novel Nine Girls, which is based in Ngāruawāhia.
The New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults was held in a ceremony at Pipitea Marae in Wellington.
Judges described Nine Girls as “a taonga from a masterful storyteller”.
Gregg is one of Aotearoa’s biggest-selling authors with millions of copies of her pony series sold worldwide. Nine Girls is the first time she’s explored te ao Māori in her writing of the coming-of-age story drawn from her own childhood.
She said she was shocked to have won and that winning the supreme award felt like a tribute to her tupuna and whānau.
The title comes from the acronym, ‘Nine girls are running under a wharf and here I am’, which spells out Ngāruawāhia. However, the saying has been lost for a generation, she said. She went back to her old high school and the kids didn’t know it.
She said the novel was about what it was like growing up in her family. There were also themes of colonisation, the Tainui wars and the raupatu (the Māori land confiscation in and after the 19th century).
" I just felt like no one had captured what life was like in a small town in the 1970s and 1980s in New Zealand, when there was so much, when we had the best race relations in the world, except we never really did,” Gregg said.
However, writing middle-grade fiction for ages eight to 12, Gregg wanted the novel to still be an ‘epic pakiwaitara’ and so there’s a hunt for gold, which her grandmother used to say was buried on their farm by Taupiri maunga, plus a talking eel.
Writing the book, she said she was having trouble channelling her tupuna, she felt too respectful and the book wasn’t working. Suddenly her tupuna showed up in the form of the eel and afterwards everything came together.
The 2024 convenor of judges, Maia Bennett (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), said: “After careful deliberation, both judging panels came to a unanimous decision on a book that not only exemplifies the highest standards but also we believe will make a lasting contribution to Aotearoa’s national literature for children and young adults; and as such, deserves the accolade of supreme winner.”
“Vivid and well-developed characters populate a fast-paced, eventful narrative as we follow the young protagonist’s journey to discovering her Māori identity. Te ao Pākehā and te ao Māori are equally uplifted as the text explores our bicultural history,” she said.
The full list of winners for the 2024 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults:
Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award $8500
Nine Girls, Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) (Penguin Random House NZ)
Picture Book Award $8500
Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai, Michaela Keeble, illustrated by Tokerau Brown (Gecko Press)
Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction $8500
Nine Girls, Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) (Penguin Random House NZ)
Young Adult Fiction Award $8500
Catch a Falling Star, Eileen Merriman (Penguin Random House NZ)
Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction $8500
Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth, Steve Mushin (Allen & Unwin)
Russell Clark Award for Illustration $8500
Patu: The New Zealand Wars, illustrated by Gavin Bishop (Tainui, Ngāti Awa) (Penguin Random House NZ)
Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award for te reo Māori $8500
Nani Jo me ngā Mokopuna Porohīanga, Moira Wairama, illustrated by Margaret Tolland (Baggage Books)
NZSA Best First Book Award $2500
Tsunami, Ned Wenlock (Earth’s End Publishing)