Educational Resource: There Are No Moa, e Hoa

 

Synopsis

Things have been quiet in the forest and Kiwi and Bat have gone back to their old lives. When the cry goes up calling for help they find a frightened tuatara who is sure she has seen a moa. How can that be? Moa haven’t been around for hundreds of years. Disbelieving, Bat and Kiwi dismiss all of Tuatara’s evidence that moa have returned but when the moa makes direct contact with Tuatara we find that the huge bird is just lonely and in need of a friend (hoa), and off they go into the mountains together. There Are No Moa, e Hoa is loosely based on the traditional Aesop’s Fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, with the twist that the tuatara believes what she is saying and Bat and Kiwi are the sceptical ones.

About the Author

Melinda Szymanik is an award-winning author of picture books, short stories and novels for children. Her books include The Were-Nana, winner of the Children’s Choice award at the 2009 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards, and Fuzzy Doodle, an international White Raven award winner in 2017. Melinda lives with her family in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). This is her seventh picture book with Scholastic.

About the Illustrator

Isobel Te Aho-White (Ngati Kahungunu, Ngai Tahu) is an illustrator based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). Her book Santa’s Worst Christmas, written by Pania Tahau-Hodges and Bryony Walker (Huia, 2019) was nominated for the 2020 NCYA Book Awards across four categories, and her book Whiti: Colossal Squid of the Deep (Te Papa Press, 2020) written by Victoria Cleal, won a Whitley award for best children’s book. Bestseller, and winner of a 2022 Storylines Notable Book Award, Matariki Around the World (Scholastic, 2022), written by Miriama Kamo and Rangi Mātāmua, is one of her recent titles.

 

Comprehension Questions

1)    What evidence does Tuatara have that moa have returned?

2)    How does the story explain away Tuatara’s evidence?

3)    Why is Tuatara afraid? What does she think Moa wants to do to her?

4)    Is Moa real, a ghost, or a figment of Tuatara’s imagination? What evidence makes you think that? Does what we believe her to be change the way we think about the ending?

 

Shared Learning and Discussion Points

1)    Kiwi says his are the biggest bird feet in the forest. Is this true?

2)    How long ago did moa walk the land? Why are they no longer here?

3)    In the story Moa says they are vegetarian. What did moa eat? Where did they live? In the forest? In the mountains? Or somewhere else?

4)    Tuatara says she is called a living fossil. How long have tuatara existed – would there been tuatara around when dinosaurs walked the earth?

5)    The story is loosely based on the famous Aesop’s Fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Ask the students if they recognise which fable the story is similar to. Read the original fable to them and ask them what the similarities and differences are.

6)    This book has an underlying message about friendship, as suggested by the title. Who makes the best friend for Tuatara? Share why you think so. Why does Moa say that Tuatara is the only one that can see them? And is everyone trying to be a good friend ... or not?

 

Activities

1)    Tuatara drew a cave painting to show where she’d gone. Draw your own picture of Tuatara riding on Moa’s back. Or draw a picture in the style of a cave painting, as illustrated on p.30 of There Are No Moa, e Hoa.

2)    Research how big a moa feather would have been. Is there a New Zealand native bird (living or extinct) that might have had bigger feathers? Which New Zealand native bird has the smallest feather and how big is that? Make a model of both the biggest and the smallest feather and compare them.

3)    There are some fun and interesting expressions used in the story

 

‘… too true, too true … the right question is who’

‘… my bones know’

‘The ground trembles. The trees shiver!’

‘… a full moon rose like the huge golden eye of a ruru.’

 

Using one of these lines as inspiration, write a poem.

 

Melinda Szymanik

November 2022

 

 


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