WaiPRU annual picturebook seminar
Staff: and
Years: 2016 - current
The core event of our annual calendar is the WaiPRU picturebook seminar usually held in November. This is a day long seminar featuring presentations from librarians, teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers and researchers.
In previous years our themes have been as follows:
- 2016 鈥� Picturebooks and Diversity
- 2017 鈥� Postmodern Picturebooks
- 2018 鈥� Gods Monsters and Taniwha in Picturebooks
- 2019 鈥� Non Fiction Picturebooks
- 2020 鈥� Silent Picturebooks
- 2021 鈥� Languages and Picturebooks
- 2022 鈥� Perspectives on Disability and Inclusion in Picturebooks
- 2023 鈥� Picturebooks and Histories
- 2024 鈥� Picturebooks and Whenua (the land), embedded in the 2024 ACLAR (Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research) conference
- 2025 鈥� Tima - Time WaiPru Picturebook Conference registration
Exploring Pasifika Picturebooks in ECE settings
Staff: and
Years: November 2021 - present
The aim of this ongoing project is to assist Early Childhood Education (ECE) kaiako to select and use Pasifika picturebooks to support and celebrate Pasifika children鈥檚 languages, cultures and identities, and support other children鈥檚 understandings in keeping with expectations in Te Wh膩riki and 罢补辫补蝉腻&苍产蝉辫;(Ministry of Education, 2017; 2018). There is little resource-specific information currently available to ECE kaiako to support their work in these areas. This project is being led by Dr. Janette Kelly-Ware and we have partnered with three kindergartens (Tauranga, Tokoroa and Levin) to explore how kaiako and tamariki respond to picturebooks featuring Pacific communities and languages.
Typography in bilingual picturebooks
Staff: Nic Vanderschantz and
Date: 24/03/2022
This project explores the design and presentation of typography in bilingual picturebooks. Our research includes critical analysis of the language hierarchies and typographic hierarchies in New Zealand picturebooks featuring Te Reo M膩ori and English, and has developed design principles for book designers to consider when laying out text in bilingual picturebooks. We have also worked with two postgraduate students to explore how readers respond to these layouts in German-English and Te Reo M膩ori-English picturebooks.
WaiPRU Picturebook Club
Staff: and
Years: 2016 鈥� current
WaiPRU runs a weekly (during the teaching trimester) picturebook club. Originally this was in person, but we began having our meeting online in 2022 due to Covid restrictions, and have decided to continue this as it allows for participation from across the country (and internationally).
We focus on international picturebooks in Trimester A each year (March-June), and New Zealand picturebooks in Trimester B (July-October). We aim to have fun and laugh, and sometimes a moving picturebook even makes us cry. You can join for a week here and there- whenever it works for you. You don鈥檛 have to attend every session 鈥� just come when you can. Here is the Zoom Link:
WaiPRU Illustrator exhibitions
Staff: and
Years: 2021 - present
Each year WaiPRU invites a picturebook illustrator to share their work, exploring how, where and why they illustrate picturebooks in an exhibition at the Teaching Resources Library at the Hamilton campus of the 糖心Vlog (March-May). Towards the end of their exhibition we invite them to give a talk which we record and share on our website.
In 2021, Nikki Slade-RobInson shared her wonderful picturebooks, and in 2022, Deborah Hinde was invited to exhibit her work. On May 25 Deborah shared a fascinating talk via Zoom about her work as an illustrator (see link).
Using picturebooks in tertiary education
Staff: , Julie Barbour, Marilyn Blakeney-Williams and
Years: 2013 - present
Since 2013 we have completed a number of studies describing and analysing how picturebooks can be used in university settings in a range of contexts including teacher education, and linguistics.
Language and picturebooks
Staff: and
Years: 2021 - present
In this talk featuring publishers Eboni Waitere (Huia Publishers) and Julia Marshall (Gecko Press).
We explore language and picturebooks.
Summer Scholars
Staff: and
Years: 2016 - present
Over the years WaiPRu has been lucky to work with several Summer Scholars through the university Summer Scholar programme.
In 2016 Kate Morgan explored using picturebooks to support understandings of queer cultures, gender and family diversity ; In 2020 Cushla Foe (Bottom middle) identified and analysed picturebooks published since 2013 featuring Pacific communities and languages, and in 2021 Angela Fuimaono (bottom right)observed now kaiako and tamariki in a Pacific ECE setting responded to picturebooks focusing on Pacific communities and languages.
Toru Tair: An Exploration of Dual Language Picturebooks in Aotearoa New Zealand and Wales
From left to right: Siwan, Nicola and Ilid
This project began via Zoom in 2021 soon after the 糖心Vlog and Cardiff University signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Siwan made contact with Nicola to discuss their shared interest in the use of children鈥檚 literature to support language learning and revitalisation. Their research together with then Masters now PhD student Ilid Haf began with a survey of dual language picturebooks in the two countries, leading to a conference presentation and journal article. It has the name Toru Tair (Three Three) because we are working with three languages: Welsh, M膩ori and English, and there are three of us in the research team.
In 2023 the research was supported by the Cardiff-Waikato Seed funding which allowed Nicola to travel to Cardiff and over a 5 week period, to work with Siwan and Ilid using dual language picturebooks with inservice teachers attending a sabbatical course to develop their Welsh language skills. Presentations are or have been made at the 2024 IBBY conference in Trieste, Italy; the 2024 online Fostering Dialogue conference concerning the use of children鈥檚 literature in Tertiary settings; and the 2024 Australasian Children鈥檚 Literature Association for Research (ACLAR conference).
Biographies
Siwan Rosser is senior lecturer and deputy head at the School of Welsh, Cardiff University and her research expertise focuses on Welsh literature for children and young adults. Since 2017, the findings of her review of Welsh books for children and young adults inform the Books Council of Wales鈥� strategy to support the children鈥檚 publishing industry, and her academic publications on topics such as translation and nationhood have established Welsh children's literature as a recognised and meaningful area of study. She has contributed chapters to publications such as Roald Dahl: Wales of the Imagination (ed. Walford Davies, 2016) and Didactics and the Modern Robinsonade (ed. Kinane, 2019). Her volume on nineteenth-century children鈥檚 literature and the concept of childhood, Darllen y Dychymyg (Reading the Imagination) (University of Wales Press, 2020), is the first monograph on Welsh literature for children and was awarded the Sir Ellis-Griffith Memorial Prize by the University of Wales and shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year Award 2021.
Ilid Haf is a PhD student in Cardiff University鈥檚 School of Welsh, where she previously completed her master鈥檚 degree. During the MA she specialised in children鈥檚 literature, writing a thesis on parents and publishers鈥� perspectives on Welsh-English bilingual picturebooks. She has previously worked for a children鈥檚 reading charity and the Books Council of Wales and currently works in a Welsh book shop alongside her studies.