Author Shelley Burne-Field (Sāmoa, Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Rārua, Pākehā) Photo: supplied
Hawke's Bay author Shelley Burne-Field has written her newest book with heaps of heart for young readers.
Kimi the Kekeno's Big Adventure, released on Tuesday, takes readers on an underwater journey from bottom-to-top of New Zealand's East-Coast.
The story itself was drawn from a true story of a seal that entered a marine biologist's Mt Manganui home through a cat door, as well as her visit to the Cape Palliser Lighthouse in Wairarapa where she saw a colony of seals and her creative mind wandered.
"Yes, they're wild animals but they could be kurī (dogs) - just sort of lying there in the sun - they're just so funny and in my brain, I sort of put that stuff together and the story just came out," she said.
But what's a story without tension? How does Kimi the kekeno get around a hammerhead shark named Kuru and a taniwha, in this case a squid?
The children's book uses age-appropriate te reo Māori kupu (words) with the translation in the glossary.
Burne-Field said it was important for her to include te reo in any story set in Aotearoa New Zealand, especially when describing natural scenery and animals. She credited illustrator Mat Tait for visually telling the story.
"He captured the cheekiness of the seals, of the kekeno, and the feeling of the beautiful turquoise deep feeling of being under the sea."
Kimi the Kekeno’s Big Adventure is out on 29 April Photo: Supplied
This will be her second children's book. Her first, Brave Kāhu and the Pōrangi Magpie, was shortlisted in the 2025 NZ Booklovers Awards for Best Junior Fiction - which Tait also illustrated.
Burne-Field (Sāmoa, Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Rārua, Pākehā) pulls from her Māori and Sāmoan whakapapa to write, her path of discovering her Māori connections only begun 15-years ago.
"I grew up in Hawke's Bay and grew up 'pretty much pālangi,' trying to just figure all that out and figure out those links so in my writing, that was really important to have some [Māori] kupu."
For Burne-Field, writing children's books helps her learn and use te reo Māori more, but it also brings out her inner child.
"I've always told stories, I've always written stories, even when I was little kid, I was painting stories and just making up stories in my head," she said.
"In my children's novels, I'm sort of writing them to myself when I was a little kid."
But it was never her dream to become an author.
"[It] came later as I figured out a bit of the world. I didn't really know back then that 'oh I want to write this book'", she said.
"I think life takes you, to use the sea metaphor, it can take you on one current and then you jump off and move on to another one."
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