{"id":31623,"date":"2021-05-01T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/may\/01\/i-never-found-myself-in-a-book-patricia-grace-on-the-importance-of-maori-literature"},"modified":"2021-05-01T05:00:45","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T20:00:45","slug":"i-never-found-myself-in-a-book-patricia-grace-on-the-importance-of-maori-literature-patricia-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=31623","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I never found myself in a book\u2019: Patricia Grace on the importance of M\u0101ori literature | Patricia Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this extract from her new memoir, the New Zealand writer explains why children need to read about people like them<\/p>\n<p>In 1987 I presented a paper at the Fourth Early Childhood Convention in Wellington. I titled the paper \u201cBooks Are Dangerous\u201d. Always in my mind were the experiences of teaching reading in the small country schools, and what a difference it made to children\u2019s learning, their self-confidence, their joy, when there were stories about them. Not only about them, but by them. This didn\u2019t mean that they did not like the stories and books about others, because they did, but in writing their own stories and sharing them, they were able to see themselves as worthy protagonists too.<\/p>\n<p>In preparation for the paper, I thought about my own childhood reading. Though I had always liked books, any books, any written-down words or expressions, the ones I read as a child were always exotic. I never found myself in a book.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/may\/01\/i-never-found-myself-in-a-book-patricia-grace-on-the-importance-of-maori-literature\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this extract from her new memoir, the New Zealand writer explains why children need to read about people like themIn 1987 I presented a paper at the Fourth Early Childhood Convention in Wellington. I titled the paper \u201cBooks Are Dangerous\u201d. Always in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,897,56,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-maori","category-new-zealand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31624,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31623\/revisions\/31624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}