Taniwha | Gavin Bishop

The amazing Gavin Bishop brings us a monster-sized book about the mythical monsters of Aotearoa!

Award-winning weaver of stories Gavin Bishop retells a variety of tales about the taniwha of Aotearoa, from the guardians who accompanied waka voyages to present-day inhabitants of the whenua and moana. 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 forand 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.

Gavin Bishop (Tainui, Ngati Awa) is a highly acclaimed children's book author and illustrator of more than 70 books, whose work ranges from original stories to retellings of Maori myths, European fairy stories, and nursery rhymes. Among the numerous fellowships and national book prizes that have been awarded to Gavin throughout his career, he has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and has won the supreme Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award a record five times. The Storylines Gavin Bishop Award for Picture Book Illustration was established in 2009 to acknowledge Gavin's contribution to the writing and illustrating of children's picture books in Aotearoa. He was the 2025 AWF Honoured Writer at the Auckland Writers Festival and his book artwork has been acquired for the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Gavin lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand. See more about him and his work at www.gavinbishop.com.