Lying awake one night wishing she’d read more as a child, author and TV presenter Sonya Wilson was struck with an idea that would change the course of Christmas for not just her own family, but also thousands more across Aotearoa.
The mum of two recalls it was while she was sleeplessly trying to re-write a short story for her postgraduate creative writing coursework.
“It was 3am and I was turning the words over in my head, cursing that I hadn’t read more and didn’t have a wider literary background to draw on,” says Sonya, 44, who’s worked as a reporter, presenter and producer on programmes including One News and Q+A.
“That got me thinking how beneficial and mind-expanding reading is for kids, and how privileged my own are to grow up in a household full of books. Through no fault of their own, so many grow up without them. It seemed so unfair.”
She pledged to herself to buy and donate children’s books that Christmas to worthy causes, and persuaded family and friends to do the same, offering to deliver them on their behalf. She encouraged people to buy works by New Zealand authors and to shop at local bookshops.
Keep those good reads coming, folks.
As word spread, donations of enticing titles came in thick and fast, and boxes of them piled up in Sonya’s Auckland home. Luckily, her husband Pete Ritchie and sons Art, 11, and Hector, nine, were understanding of the storage arrangement dominating their hallway.
“I still remember the day I phoned Women’s Refuge to ask if books would be useful,” she shares. “It was devastating to hear that kids arrive with nothing more than the clothes on their backs because they tend to leave so quickly to escape. Some of them would never have had a Christmas present before, let alone a book.”
That first year, 2019, the collection grew from the 50 Sonya had intended to a whopping 1600. A week before the big day, Art and Hector jumped in the car with her to deliver some to City Mission.
“When we arrived, it was almost overwhelming for the kids to see the scale of the need out there.”
She hadn’t planned to make the collection a regular feature of Christmas, but novelist Paula Morris, who heads a creative writing course at Auckland University, enthused that Sonya had to do it again, but with a wider coverage. The gesture turned into the Kiwi Christmas Books charity.
She’s got help from her elves!
Friends helped with the initial set up, including website design, and the following Christmas 6500 books were collected. Last year, despite the disruptions of Covid and with the help of a gift card system, Kiwi Christmas Books still managed to donate 6670 books to 21 charities around the country.
“It’s a crazy time around the middle of December, collecting and distributing the final donations,” tells Sonya, who has now also written her own children’s novel, Spark Hunter, which won Best First Book Award at this year’s New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
“The kids help me sort and count them, and package up the gift cards,” she says. “It’s just me running it, so their help is fabulous. They’re very much my unpaid little Christmas elves!”
As well as the online option, the charity now has donation boxes in bookstores country-wide so people can buy a book and donate it there and then. “The store owners are amazed to see the amount of thought and love people, and their kids, put into choosing the right one.”
Sonya’s own children delight in adding a personal donation and both are great readers. “We are all really busy and we’re not huge on making them do loads of homework, but one thing we have always done is read to them. Every night, they still read and most nights we’re still reading to them as well, often curled up with our cat Graham or dog Dusky.”
With sons Hector (left) and Art, plus Dusky the dog.
As a child, Enid Blyton’s book The Magic Faraway Tree sticks out as an especially cherished Christmas present for Sonya. “I loved the concept of kids climbing into this tree to another world. We had a big tree across from our house in Invercargill, and we’d climb up, push through the leaves and out onto a branch. I was convinced if I took the right pathway, I’d emerge into another world.”
Ironically, the only day Sonya says they don’t get the chance to curl up together with a book is Christmas. “Christmas Day is usually full on, with lots of extended family and when you have 30 people in a room celebrating, it’s not really a day when books are read quietly.”
Sonya laughs when she says she never set out to run a charity. “I just really believe in the power of fiction and stories,” she enthuses. “It’s not just literacy kids learn, but so many other things like empathy and the ability to see the world from somebody else’s perspective. Books are taonga [treasure] that can have effects on you well into adulthood.”
To find out more or to donate, visit, kiwichristmasbooks.org.nz
