Read Pacific are specialists in educational resources for New Zealand schools and institutions and the wider Pacific. Over the last 30 years the company has provided a wide range of products to support learning, including books, maths and science equipment, art and craft supplies, stationery, classroom furniture, musical, library and sports equipment. With an understanding of the special requirements of Pacific schools and their curriculums, Read Pacific has partnered with many educational institutions and aid agencies to supply teaching and student resources that are designed specifically to meet local curriculum and cultural objectives. Read Pacific publishes and prints on demand in many Pacific Island languages and has worked translation agreements with several lead publishers to translate their textbooks into other languages.
Series information
Read Pacific Classics series
The Read Pacific Classics series takes some of the best of European literature and adapts it for secondary students in Pacific Islands. Titles include Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a new twist on the Charles Dickens classic with a female protagonist: Olivia Twista. All are published in French as well to cater for French-speaking Pacific nations, and full teacher’s notes are available with each title.
Healthy Start to Life series
Read Pacific have released a number of publications in partnership with the The Healthy Start to Life Education for Adolescents project from the University of Auckland’s Liggins Institute. The project intends to enable communication and translation of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease research, facilitating students’ scientific and health literacy. Across a wide range of communities including in New Zealand, the Cook Islands and Tonga, the research project has found that 11 to 14 year olds are fascinated by exploration of evidence of the association between early-life nutrition and life-long wellbeing; 13 to 14 year olds are captured by evidence exploring why their generation has entered puberty earlier than their parents, and what long-term impacts this might have; 15 to 16 year olds are passionately interested in evidence demonstrating that the prevalence of type 2 diabetes, rampant in many New Zealand and Pacific communities, could be reduced by health-promoting actions during adolescence and prior to parenthood. The titles from the Healthy Start to Life series include My First 1,000 Days; Me, Myself, My Environment (Tongan edition, Cook Islands edition); Exploring Type 2 Diabetes: A Socio-Scientific Issue for My Community (Cook Islands edition); Two Hundred Years of Lifestyle Change on Rarotonga (Cook Islands edition); and Children Programmed for Obesity (Cook Islands).
Non-fiction
Surviving a Tsunami by Jackie Faasisila, Angela Jowitt, and Walter Dudley was published on the second anniversary of the 2009 Samoa Tsunami, and is an excellent resource for students aged 8-14 years. Full of diagrams and scientific facts about earthquakes and tsunamis, the book includes actual accounts from survivors from the 2009 tsunami, many from children.
Social Sciences textbooks
In partnership with the Ministry of Education and Training in Vanuatu, Read Pacific have developed full student textbooks which are now being used across all schools in Vanuatu. Designed to align with a teacher’s guide and to support specific learning objectives, each textbook features 30 learning units and is written in 3 languages. Full-colour photos and illustrations bring the topics to life.
Numeracy Kits
Read Pacific’s Numeracy Kits were designed to meet the specific teaching and learning objectives of the Ministry of Education and Training in Vanuatu, where 600 kits were distributed to schools all across Vanuatu. The Kits featured a range of maths resources as well as bespoke teaching resources such as flip charts and posters printed by Read Pacific.
School and Community Learning Resource Kits
In partnership with Save the Children Papua New Guinea, Read Pacific designed and delivered 780 school and community learning resource kits. The kits included specially printed materials such as a teaching flipbook and guide, readers printed in the local language, and reading cards to support reading development. As part of the RISE Community Action program, the kits were distributed to specially trained Community Literacy Volunteers to support improved teaching practices and community-based literacy activities.
Existing international relationships
Read Pacific are the sole distributor for Sunshine Books throughout all Pacific countries and represent a number of other publishers in New Zealand, Australia and globally, with over 20,000 titles.
