Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Award-winning children's book writer and illustrator, Gavin Bishop has over 70 books to show for the last five decades of his life including re-tellings of Māori myths, European fairy stories, nursery rhymes and original works.

Gavin was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2013 and President of Honour of the NZ Society of Authors.

His latest work is all about the mythical monsters of Aotearoa, Taniwha.

Here is a nippet from the book:

Taniwha are all around us.
They are good at hiding or changing their shape.
They can be very tricky.
If you want to meet one,
you have to know what to look for
and where to look.

Describing how the landscape was shaped, and exploring relations between Maori and the sometimes friendly, but more often terrifying, supernatural creatures, these traditional stories are taken to a new level of spooky visual splendour.