There are not many books or articles about children’s lives in New Zealand, especially girls. Below are a few we have found, as well as some links to other sites of interest.

If you know of any resources that should be included, please send them to us.

Dear Dot by Keith Scott

Collecting kids’ stuff: in search of the history of childhood in New Zealand museums by Lynette Townsend

History of Children’s Play in New Zealand

Girl Guiding History

Denniston Rose by Jenny Pattrick

Children from the Lighthouse by Mabel Pollock

We want to thank all of the organisations participating in the ‘Kiwi Chicks’ exhibition project since its beginning in 2012.

Girl Museum
Girl Museum is the first and ONLY museum in the world dedicated to the celebration of girlhood. It is a virtual space for research, exhibitions and education centered wholly on the subject of being a girl. We explore and document the unique experience of growing up female through historic and contemporary images, stories and material culture. Our primary focus is research, exhibitions and collaboration.

Te Papa Tongarewa
Te Papa is New Zealand’s bold and innovative national museum and a recognised world leader in interactive and visitor-focused museum experiences. New Zealand’s geology and natural environment and the stories of New Zealand’s indigenous people, the Māori, are celebrated in Te Papa’s permanent exhibitions, while Te Papa’s Marae is a vibrant contemporary meeting house and a living communal centre, unique in a museum.

Cricket Museum
At the Cricket Museum visitors can see that there’s more to cricket than Tests and tea breaks with exhibits showing the game’s development since its early-1800s introduction into New Zealand summers.

Katherine Mansfield House & Garden
Katherine Mansfield House & Garden is the birthplace of Katherine Mansfield, one of New Zealand’s most internationally famous writers. The House, now a Category 1 historic place, will be recognisable to readers of Mansfield’s stories Prelude, The Aloe and A Birthday.

Alberton
This romantic timber mansion began as a farmhouse in 1863 and was later expanded to 18 rooms, with fairy-tale decorative verandahs and towers. It was owned by the Kerr Taylors, a leading family in Mount Albert, until it was left to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (now Heritage New Zealand) in 1972.

Te Awamutu
Explore the history and stories of Te Awamutu through a range of permanent and temporary exhibitions. ‘True Colours’ tells the story of Tim and Neil Finn, known as Split Enz and Crowded House. The Tangata Whenua Gallery features many spectacular Tainui treasures. The turbulence of the Waikato Wars is explored in our exhibition ‘NZ Wars – the Waikato campaign’.

Owaka Museum
Owaka Museum Wahi Kahuika- the Meeting Place: a rest on your journey. A community museum in the picturesque Catlins.

Ewelme Cottage
This kauri-constructed Ewelme Cottage has a link with the Anglican community in Auckland, the dwelling designed and built by the Reverend Vicesimus Lush (1817-1882) and his wife Blanche in 1863-64. Ewelme Cottage is of considerable importance for its well-preserved interiors and furnishings, and provides great value on colonial building materials and techniques. It boasts close to 2000 books, hundreds of pages of sheet music, original artworks and a vast array of everyday objects from ointment pots to knitting needles.

Raglan and District Museum
Our museum provides a window on local history for the Raglan Whaingaroa area and adjacent districts. It is open every day. Displays are being progressively established through 2012 and will cover Maori, settler, farming, surf and extreme sports, art, natural science, photography and town life history.

Whanganui Regional Museum
The Whanganui Regional Museum founded in 1892, has extensive collections of natural and human history with a regional emphasis. It houses objects of national and international significance. The emphasis of the collection is primarily Whanganui. There are also significant collections from elsewhere, for example, a large Pacific Island collection and ceramics from Asia and Cyprus.

North Otago Museum
Situated in the 1882 historic Athenaeum building, the museum has nationally significant collections; The Willetts Collection of taonga tuku iho o Waitaha and the Temuka Pottery Collection. The Community Archive is used by genealogists and historians from throughout New Zealand and houses documents and photos from the North Otago region.

South Otago Museum
Just beyond the Balclutha Bridge this museum has extensive collections on display of domestic and industrial heritage reflecting 150 years of pioneer endeavor on the fertile plains and river deltas of South Otago. The artefacts housed in the museums machinery room illustrate industries on the lower Clutha River and the coastline as far the Nugget Point Lighthouse, the horizon of the Catlins.

National Scout Museum
The National Scout Museum is in the Conference Wing of the building complex at the “Blue Skies” Conference and Training Centre in Kaiapoi – North Canterbury. It has a permanent display detailing the history of Scouting in New Zealand starting from Baden Powell’s story and his founding of the movement, before covering the origins of Scouting in New Zealand. Kaiapoi features strongly in the New Zealand history of Scouting being where the first Scout Patrol is reputed to have been formed and early camps were held at Woodend where today a memorial cairn is located.

Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga O Te Arawa
Rotorua Museum of Art & History – Te Whare Taonga O Te Arawa – is housed in the magnificent Bath-House building situated in beautiful Government Gardens. The Bath-House, constructed as a therapeutic spa in 1908, is listed as a Category 1 Historic Building and is believed to be the most photographed building in New Zealand.

Clendon House
Clendon House, unpretentious in design, displays the dignity of a house suited to Captain James Reddy Clendon’s high public position. Captain Clendon was in the thick of the earliest Māori and Pakeha interaction. He was a witness to New Zealand’s Declaration of Independence in 1835, the first United States Consul in 1838, a witness to the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and a member of the first Legislative Council.

Highwic
One of New Zealand’s finest timber Gothic houses, Highwic was begun in 1862 by Alfred Buckland, one of Auckland’s most substantial land owners, and his wife Eliza. It was extended in 1873 in the style of the original, which had been copied from American A. J. Downing’s pattern book ‘The Architecture of Country Houses’.

Kemp House and Stone Store
New Zealand’s oldest European building, Kemp House, sits next to our oldest stone building, the Stone Store, at the head of the Kerikeri River Basin. The Stone Store will be open to the public in 1998 after an extensive, three-year conservation project.

Waimate Museum and Archives
Waimate Museum and Archives highlights the extensive range of exhibits that are collectively gathered from the wider Waimate District. Housed in the former Waimate Courthouse, the museum also houses their Archival research facilities that contain local government records, local history books, newspapers, documents and photographs.

Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) 
MOTAT is the largest museum of its kind in New Zealand and promises a fun, interactive and educational experience for both young and old. Learn about New Zealand’s transport and technological developments over the centuries and visit the award-winning Aviation Display Hall where you can see some truly iconic military and civil aircraft.

New Zealand Fashion Museum 
The Fashion Museum is a bold new and innovative institution. It chooses to embrace the traditional name and to honour the important function of a museum which is to develop social knowledge and to encourage discussion about key aspects of our community and of our national identity. The Fashion Museum breaks with tradition however in its form, choosing to be more fashion’able’. That is, able to be dynamic and a museum trendsetter.