default-output-block.skip-main
National | Early Childhood Development

Reo Pēpi releases second bilingual book series aimed at under fives

Dunedin māmā duo Kitty Brown and Kirsten Parkinson say they have had a “massive” response to their unique, bilingual books and are delighted to be launching a new series.

Reo Pēpi author Kitty Brown says, “We were compelled to create more resources for a NZ audience who we found to be very keen on learning a little te reo Māori!  A second series soon became inevitable."

Having now released their second series, Brown spoke about it differs from their first series.

Brown says, “They’re a little bit of a step up in terms of concepts.  The first three books were aimed at under twos.  These ones are aimed at under fives.  In this series we’re looking at the concepts of; ngā tae, the colours, ngā āhua, the shapes, te kaute, counting.”

Illustrator Kirsten Parkinson says, “At the same time our tamariki started to reach for new concepts, we were getting requests from our audience for similar subjects.  We knew exactly the kind of books to make next.”

Brown says kōhanga reo, early childhood centres and parents have given them nothing but positive feedback about their bilingual books.

“The feedback has been amazing.  They’ve loved the quality of them.  They’re really durable board books so they’re completely wipe-able, smash-able and chew-able.

Also they are really enjoying the illustrations and just the simple concepts.  I guess one of the things we’ve heard back from early childhood centres is that they are able to use the sentence structures from the pukapuka throughout the day.  For instance, kei hea te pukapuka? Kei hea o hū?”

With the success of their first series, and the release of their second series, what is next for Reo Pēpi?

“We’ve got a few ideas up our sleeves.  Potentially another series and some more language acquisition ideas and also branching out in to some other resources like flash cards or games.  But I guess our main thing we try to do is gain feedback from our market, like kōhanga reo and kaiako and just hear what they’re looking for and react to that.”

To find out more, visit their facebook page here.