The high level of family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand presents a systemic and resistant challenge for the criminal justice system. While much legal and social-science research focuses on the prevention of, and response to, family violence, there is a noticeable dearth of work examining the prosecution of serious sexual and physical violence that occurs within an intimate relationship. ‘Prosecuting Intimate Partner Rape’ addresses that gap. Comparative analysis of 20 intimate partner rape trials (both with a jury and judge-alone) provides the basis for wide-ranging proposals to reform law and practice with the aim of improving complainant trial experience. The work also demonstrates how essential it is for sexual violence within a relationship to be recognised and responded to as a distinct and significant form of harm – in particular there is a pressing need for fact-finders to consider (and be assisted to understand) the nature of consent within a context of coercive control. ‘Prosecuting Intimate Partner Rape’ will be invaluable for those working in, or with interest in, the prosecution of sexual offending and family violence and reform options. It provides commentary of use to lawyers and judges in their practice but is written to be accessible to sector workers, victim support agency workers, policy makers, and students of law, criminology, criminal justice and sociology.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 526

Dimensions: 210 x 297 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2023

With loads of sturdy flaps to lift, this engaging book helps build early reading skills as children enjoy hours of fun recognising and naming machines and matching pictures with words. Clear labels and simple, fun texts emcourage pre-readers to think and reason as they explore more than 80 vehicles and discover a huge variety of things that go!

Bind: hardback

Pages: 16

Dimensions: 216 x 276 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2022

Containing 100 jumbo crossword puzzles with easy-to-read print, this is the perfect crossword gift book for adults and seniors. The definition only 'coffee time' (as opposed to cryptic) clues are arranged on one page and the large 21 x 21 crossword grids are on the opposite facing page, with solutions easily found at the back of the book. Printed as a large format book on luxurious white paper.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 189 x 246 x 16 mm

Publication Date: 06-07-2021

Where did our Solar System come from Is Pluto still a planet Our Solar System is huge and still full of mysterious places. It is only within the last few hundred years we have been able to see it with telescopes and realise that a twinkling star is much more than a tiny light in our sky.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 32

Dimensions: 215 x 270 mm

Publication Date: 15-09-2021

This practical guide to culturally responsive teaching practice in the tertiary sector is designed to support kaiako (teachers) to reconfigure the teacher/learner dynamic and question old habits, with a view to embracing kaupapa Māori and diversity. Step by step,‘Ngā Hau e Whā o Tāwhirimātea’ explores core Māori values that can be used to enhance kaiako effectiveness and relationships with students, Māori and non-Māori alike, including: manaakitanga – ethic of care; whanaungatanga – relationships; kotahitanga – unity; and rangatiratanga – student agency and leadership. Working at their own pace, kaiako can engage with Māori students and stakeholders to co-develop learning outcomes, processes and assessments that support student success in the tertiary environment.‘Ngā Hau e Whā o Tāwhirimātea’ can be used in a cycle of reflective practice, drawing on past experience and feedback from colleagues and community to develop cultural competence and confidence in tertiary learning spaces.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 68

Dimensions: 210 x 280 mm

Publication Date: 31-03-2022

Calls for changes to the trial process in rape cases, including removing the jury as decision-maker, have been consistent over time and across jurisdictions. Victims and survivors of sexual violence, their supporters, law reformers, researchers and academics from many disciplines have advocated for the removal of the jury from rape trials for many years. Some claim it is indeed the panacea for all that is unacceptably brutal in the current trial process, with the jury being described as ‘the cause of most of the damage done’. Anecdotal evidence, and some research, suggests that in judge-alone trials cross-examination is shorter, there is less reliance on the ‘real rape’ schema, and the issues at trial are more focussed. It is also likely that judge-alone trials involve fewer delays and pre-trial appeals, and that the hearings are not as disrupted (for example, by the need for legal argument in the absence of the jury). Research also indicates a difference in verdict choices between judges and juries in the specific context of cases involving allegations of sexual violence, with the behaviour of the complainant being seen as ‘contributory fault’. Further, the way counsel conducts their case may vary when the judge is the decision-maker, which may impact on trial outcome. Due to the continued widely-held view that replacing the jury with ‘some other entity’ will have the effect of decreasing the negative impact on the complainant as a witness in the trial process (along with other desired effects such as reducing the decision-maker’s reliance on rape myths and misconceptions), it is important that empirical research is available to inform future public debate. This book records the results of such research. Elisabeth McDonald MNZM is an independent legal researcher and Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Canterbury. She has taught and published in the areas of sexual and family violence, law and sexuality, criminal law and the law of evidence for over 30 years, as an academic and as the Policy Manager for the evidence law reference at the New Zealand Law Commission. Elisabeth is the author of a number of evidence law textbooks and online legal resources, including ‘Rape Myths as Barriers to Fair Trial Process’ (2020), and is co-editor of From ‘”Real Rape” to Real Justice’ (2011) and ‘Feminist Judgments Aotearoa: Te Rino, the Two-Stranded Rope’ (2017).

Bind: paperback

Pages: 376

Dimensions: 210 x 297 mm

Publication Date: 13-04-2022

If you could go anywhere in the whole wide world, where would it be? There are so many countries to explore, and so much to see. Come along on a trip to learn about some of the world's most incredible places.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 250 x 250 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2022

Recent media reports have highlighted a long-standing issue: literacy rates in New Zealand are falling. But modern demand for literacy skills is increasing. Employers, schools and tertiary institutes all agree on the importance of communication and writing skills. We have a genuine and widespread need for a simple and user-friendly guide to grammar and writing that is written in New Zealand for New Zealanders. Don’t Hate Grammar helps students and professionals write clearly and correctly. It covers the most important aspects of grammar, construction, style and referencing, using simple definitions and clear examples. It explains New Zealand English with local words and grammatical rules in a simple and friendly style. The book design enables people to quickly find the information they need while they are writing on paper or computer.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 94

Dimensions: 150 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 19-08-2022

From a sole teacher to New Zealand’s largest school, Going the Distance tells the 100-year story of how a correspondence scheme, a “doubtful experiment” became the Department of Education’s Correspondence School and later through a series of remarkable transformations - Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, which now enrols more than 25,000 students a year and is the country’s largest Māori school. The Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, has described Te Kura’s work with the country’s most vulnerable students as one of the great untold stories of the New Zealand education system. Back in 1922, the first teacher, Miss Janet MacKenzie, was expecting to enrol about 25 “backblocks”students, but such was the clamour for education that the numbers rocketed with 100 on the roll by the time lessons began. By the end of the year, there were almost 350 pupils, with every lesson, every correction, every letter to pupil and parent handwritten by the sole teacher. The book follows the school’s history through the appointments of several headmasters, all of whom were determined that the pupils should have a “real school”. They held exhibitions of students work (attended by many dignitaries of the day), formed a multitude of clubs, established a museum, built an extensive library, sent out teachers into isolated districts. These visiting teacher reached their remote pupils through an astonishing range of transport, including by dinghy, horseback and on gun carriers. Residential schools were also held every year where the “corrie kids” would spend a month with their schoolmates, who they got to know through the pages of their annual magazine, the Postman. A lot of the story is related by the pupils themselves in the prose and verse they contributed to the Postman, from 1928 to 2002. There are also many comments and descriptions of the school through annual reports, in speeches by Governors General, Prime Ministers from Michael Joseph Savage to David Lange, as well as Ministers of Education, and Government agencies. In the book’s foreword, the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, a former Te Kura student herself, says Going the Distance is not only a history of the school and the New Zealand education, but is also the story of how New Zealanders lived in times past, what they thought about, what was important to them, and even what they laughed about. And she says it tells how Te Kura has been called on in times of national crises, such as the devastating polio epidemics of the 1940s right up to providing its expertise in online learning during the COVID-19 global pandemic. For its first 60 years, the school was truly a national icon – a model of innovative educational programmes, a national broadcaster of educational programmes, and a provider of lessons to a broad range of students from early childhood to adults. However, the school’s fortunes begin to change dramatically in the 1980s. Its traditional base of remote children declined, and a new student profile began to dominate - students, alienated, often expelled, from their own school, often Māori, and most problematically, a type of student least suited to learn on their own through distance education. The school said it had been given a major social problem by government agencies without the additional resourcing needed to do the job, and was then criticised publicly by other branches of the government for failing to achieve the impossible. For many years the school struggled to find a solution, and it wasn’t until the appointment of the current CE Mike Hollings that the school – now Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu – has been able to tackle “the impossible”. In the words of the latest ERO report on Te Kura (December 2021), it has raised the achievement of the most vulnerable and “at risk” ākonga (student) and at a time when increasing numbers of rangatahi (young people) are falling out of the education system. Te Kura has been part of the education system in Aotearoa New Zealand for 100 years. Just as it was crucial in its early years, providing lessons to those unable to access schooling, today it is providing the opportunity to tens of thousands of students who would otherwise miss out on an education. Te Kura is just as relevant – and needed – all these years later.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 252

Dimensions: 210 x 298 mm

Publication Date: 30-09-2022

Aftermaths explores the life-changing intergenerational effects of colonial violence in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. The settings of these accessible, illustrated short essays range from Ōrākau pā in the Waikato to the Kimberleys in northwest Australia, from orphanages in Fiji to the ancestral lands of the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California. Story by story, this collection powerfully reveals the living legacy of historical events, showing how they have been remembered (and misremembered) within families and communities into the present day.

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 170 x 240 x 20 mm

Publication Date: 14-04-2023