In the past few days I have been reading two books. The first one is called Mission girl and the second is Dawn raid. Mission girl is a book I’ve just recently got from term three’s Duffy books. Dawn raid is also a Duffy book but I got this in term two. These are “My New Zealand” stories.
Mission Girl is a lovely an adventurous story about a young girl named Atapo who is living with her tribe. Suddenly…another tribe attacked and killed all the babies. They took everyone as slaves. The leader of this tribe took Atapo’s mother Kahu. A terrible sickness arrived and Kahu was pregnant with her second baby. Kahu fell sick and one night passed away. Marama Atapo’s grandmother and Atapo’s aunties gave her kumara, her mothers hetiki and earring and told Atapo to run away.
Soon she found a mission house and stayed there for a night and day. She moved around and left for another mission house far away from her tribe. She learned the ways of a pakeha a survive strategy. She turned to the lord, and the church and learned how to write and read.
Atapo even went on to be one of the members who signed the treaty. She even had some admires but after a while the new chief of her tribe put a curse on her that she would die. They blamed Atapo for all the deaths in there village. At the end Atapo decided that she would leave to go find her other kin (family) that was down south. She was going to teach them to read and write. She was also going to show them the love of god.
The chiefs son of that tribe got married to Atapo. And the sickness that Atapo’s mother and granmother died from was influenza. I loved this book cause showed you how she was feeling. It made you feel empathy towards what she was feeling.
After all Atapo lost. She still stowed determination, grit and faced her challenges. She learned, carried out her grandmother wishes. She still carried on, even after being cursed and blamed for others deaths. She never gave up hope. It really shows what an Amazing female Atapo is. I would definatly read this book again and again and again.
Keep reading in the holidays. I’ll up date you on another review on the second book (Dawn raid) in another blog post?
Have you read any of the My New Zealand stories before?
I love that you read Ruby. There is such great information in books. I have not read any “my New Zealand” stories. I might have to borrow this book.