Author(s): David Hill; Phoebe Morris

NZ Picture Books | NZ Non Fiction | Biography & Autobiography | Dinosaurs

The remarkable true story of science superstar Joan Wiffen, whose fossil discoveries proved that dinosaurs lived in ancient New Zealand. Once there was a clever girl who liked searching for interesting things on the ground. She wanted to know why shells could be found in rocks so far away from the sea. But her father thought education was no use to a girl, so Joan had to leave school. Many years later, she bought an old map. To her amazement, she saw that it marked a treasure hoard. Not of gold and jewels, but of dinosaur bones. Nobody had ever found dinosaur fossils in New Zealand before - in fact, top scientists had said it was impossible. But Joan was intrigued. She decided to learn everything she could about palaeontology and hunt for these dinosaur fossils. This is the fifth picture book in an acclaimed series of true stories about the lives of famous Kiwis written by David Hill and magnificently illustrated by Phoebe Morris.

Lucy's Review:

For a long time, scientists believed no dinosaurs had lived in the land that is now Aotearoa New Zealand. It was the work of Joan Wiffen, and the evidence she found, that proved they did.

When Joan was a little girl growing up in the Hawkes Bay in the 1920s, she wondered why there were so many shells in rocks far from the sea. She left school at the age of 14 (as her father didn't think girls needed education) but a lack of formal education didn't stop her from learning. In the 1970s, she found a "treasure map" marking the location of dinosaur bones. After a  year of exploring Mangahouanga Stream, Joan found her first dinosaur fossil!

The remarkable true story of Joan Wiffen, this is is the fifth picture book in David Hill and Phoebe Morris' series on famous New Zealanders.