Arapū toi

The story of this book

Kāpiti Coast artist Austin Whincup was born in Africa, spent his early childhood years in Kiribati and North Wales, then as a teenager came to live in Aotearoa New Zealand. The influence of the lands Austin has lived in are reflected in his beautiful artwork.

In 1998, Austin painted an original set of alphabet art images on the square lids of ice cream containers as a present for his new born nephew Canon. Canon’s parents were delighted with Austin’s gift and asked Wellington storyteller and writer Moira Wairama to write a series of poems to sit alongside the paintings. This led to the creation of BasicallyDifferent which published the artwork and poems as a book titled Alphabet Art together with a set of alphabet cards featuring Austin’s artwork.

For many years Moira Wairama, author of Alphabet Art and Tina Larsen of BasicallyDifferent shared a vision to one day create a Māori language version of Alphabet Art. Finally, in 2019 that vision was being realised with the publication of Arapū Toi, a book and frieze which includes many of Austin’s original paintings plus three new images and a completely new set of poems in te reo Māori written by Moira.

In 2020 we were so excited that Arapū Toi, was a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in the Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award catagory. Unfortunately that was the year of Covid so although restrictions had been relaxed the awards were held as a virtual online event.

Baggage Books organised for the writer, illustrator, whanau and friends to gather at our local marae to watch the online event together and although the book didn’t win the award we were able to celebrate that it had been a finalist.