Tu Meke Tui Hardcover

Tu Meke Tui Hardcover

Tu Meke Tui is a story of friendship, courage and discovering that sometimes it’s our differences that make us truly special.

Tere the Tui and Tait the Takah are two very different sorts of birds; one loves to flit and twirl around in the sky, while the other prefers to rustle about in the undergrowth.

Tumeke is a New Zealand Ma ori word which means to startle or take fright. In recent years, tu meke (as two words) has developed as a colloquial phrase meaning too much and is used to express excitement or being shaken up.

• Measures 250mm x 250mm x 15mm
• 22 pages of full colour
• Hardcover
• From award-winning New Zealand author Malcolm Clarke
• Illustrated by Flox (Aka Hayley King)
• Designed and published by Mary Egan Ltd

Tu Meke Tui is also available in Paperback and translated into Te Reo Maori. Click HERE to see our range of books in Te Reo Maori.

Tui are boisterous bird of the forest and suburbi. They look black from a distance, but in good light tui have a blue, green and bronze iridescent sheen, and distinctive white throat tufts (poi). They are usually very vocal, with a complicated mix of tuneful notes interspersed with coughs, grunts and wheezes. In flight, their bodies slant with the head higher than the tail, and their noisy whirring flight is interspersed with short glides.

The flightless Takah have a large, strong red beak and stout red legs. Its feathers range from an iridescent dark blue head, neck and breast to peacock blue shoulders and turquoise and olive green wings and back. They have wings, but only use them to display during courtship or as a show of aggression.