Book Review: Bits of String too Short to Use by Jennifer Beck

Auckland-based Jennifer Beck is well-known as a writer of award-winning children's picture books. Many of her books are illustrated by Dunedin-based illustrator Robyn Belton, including The Anzac Violin, which tells the story of Dunedin-born Alexander Aitken and his violin during the First World War.

Beck's memoir is delightful, honest, and full, and she captures her past well. She uses mementos she has collected throughout her lifetime to help tell episodes from her past, and in doing so, makes a slice of New Zealand history tangible and relatable. 

Beck covers her rural childhood growing up near Waipu in Northland, right through to her current life, facing decisions around ageing and "down-sizing". In between she tells tales of her adventures hitchhiking around New Zealand and then Europe in the early 1960s, intrepid travel back to New Zealand overland from London, and her life as a student, wife, mother, teacher, educational psychologist and writer, and also collector, and, inspired by A. H. Reed, walker. Beck doesn't gloss over her hard or tough times, but always looks for the good, like the support she and her loved ones have received from the communities around them in times of trouble and sorrow. 

I read Beck's memoir to learn about her writing life and the growth of the children's book industry in Aotearoa, which her writing career developed alongside. However, Beck's curious and astute memoir offers so much more. A particular bonus for Dunedin readers is Beck's thoughts on living in our UNESCO City of Literature as a recipient of the 2015 University of Otago College of Education/Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence fellowship.