Today I will be doing a book review on Dawn raid. My last book review I told you about the book Mission girl. This book (dawn raid) is one of my Duffy books that I’ve read. It is written by the author Pauline Vaeluaga Smith.
Dawn raid is set in the 1970’s and is about a girl Sophia who enjoys learning te reo songs and learning rakau. Her main worries as a young girl is to find enough pocket money to buy her dream boots. The groovy go-go boots! Sophia ends up doing speech competitions and needs to find more info to put in her speech. She finds out that a lot of people bullied her because of her speech. Sophia constantly gets bullied because of her culture, the names of cultural food, and about her family. She however ended up in the final for her speech. She faced her bullies.
She ends up getting on the milk run to get pocket money. A job at last, but she is under age. After a week trial she puts her groovy go-go boots on lay by. Before she goes on holiday, she finally has enough money to buy her groovy go-go boots.
She went to say at he Grandparents house. One night at her grandparents house there was a raid. At four o’clock in the morning police come in and are pulling people out of bed, people are screaming and crying. Her uncle, dad and her brother Lenny is sent to jail for protesting against the police. After the dawn raid Sophia’s family get help form the Polynesian panthers.
The panthers encourage immigrant families across New Zealand to stand up for there rights. She ends up being friends with the bully and she finds out what to ad to her speech about being Dawn raided and after the speech competition she came second place.
As her family listened to her speech they learnt the secret. Instead of Lenny going to his friends house for the weekend, he and his friend was walking in the big hikoi to parliament.
I enjoyed Dawn Raid because it showed what it was like growing up in the 1970s. Sophia had set herself a goal and never gave up. She worked really hard and saved a lot of pocket money for the groovy go-go boots. It was sad that Sophia got bullied and her family got raided.
In the end her family that went to jail got out, she used her experience to write an excellent speech and come second.
Have you ever read Dawn Raid before? I would really recommend it.
