The Dream Factory, Steph Matuku, illustrated by Zak Ātea, Huia Publishers, 2024
also available in te reo Māori, Te Wheketere Moemoea
A review
Ah! Imagine a dream factory, imagine a machine that sends dreams drifting into the town and people dream of marvelous things: tigers, rainbow trousers, cars that fly to the moon, mermaids, scrumptious cakes. Steph Matuku does just this in The Dream Factory. She lets her imagination go soaring and we get to go soaring with it. Each day when the town awakens, the people let their doing soar: they tell tiger stories, they paint unicorns and bake cakes in the shapes of flowers.
But there is a twist, a kink, a startle, when a kererū flies into the dream factory and drops a feather. Catastrophe! Ah, what happens next when the dream factory runs amok is genius!
The secret to every good children’s picture book is a combination of charismatic ingredients. One is writing that flows like honey as this book does. So many charasmatic options but, for me, one is the arrival of surprise, as when the swirling dream mist switches to dark cloud jolt.
Another vital ingredient are illustrations that satisfy your eye and enhance the story. Zak Ātea’s terrific artwork does exactly that. She uses a sublime combination of a mood-rich, colour palette and fascinating detail – an exquisite mix.
Children’s picture books have the ability to lift you out of glum and slumber, and make your skin prick and your heart tingle, until you let out a long sigh of satisfaction. Steph’s The Dream Factory does exactly that. This is a book to read and reread to your tamariki, mokopuna and to yourself. I adore it.
Steph Matuku (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama, Te Atiawa) is a freelance writer from Taranaki. She enjoys writing stories for young people, and her work has appeared on the page, stage and screen. Her first two novels, Flight of the Fantail and Whetū Toa and the Magician were Storylines Notable Books. Whetū Toa and the Magician was a finalist at the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. In 2021, she was awarded the established Māori writer residency at the Michael King Centre where she worked on a novel about post-apocalyptic climate change.
Zak Ātea Komene is an illustrator and visual artist living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. Her work includes editorial illustration, children’s book illustration, artist book design and fine art practises created through digital and traditional painting and drawing mediums. Through her work she explores the intangibles of our world, and the complexities of self within both a worldly and Te Ao Māori lens with a focus on colour, texture and multimedia practises. Her illustrations for The Dream Factory have been shortlisted for the 2024 NZ Children and YA Book Awards.
Huia page
Two conversations
Steph Makutu
What draws you to writing for children? I love your opening dedication to ‘the kids at Vogeltown School’ in The Dream Factory.
Why do I write for children? I like writing across genres and mediums because I get bored doing the same thing over and over. I’d like to write a book for adults one day – it seems easier than writing for children! I spent a lot of time reading when I was young. It was a safe place for me. Perhaps I’m just trying to recreate that sense of safety and security. I was at a children’s writers conference a couple of years and the joke was that you write for the age you were when you peaked in life. I like to think for me it was around 14 or so! My own children went to Vogeltown School in New Plymouth, and it was a marvellous school with an excellent staff and a cool, relaxed atmosphere. They deserved a book dedication!
You write for different ages across genres, always achieving a sweet alchemy of storytelling features. What are some key ingredients in a charismatic picture book?
Now please bear in mind that I am not an expert. All my writing is done on vibes. I don’t have any academic qualifications to back up anything I say, but it just kinda feels right. In my mind, a picture book tells a story with words, and tells a story with pictures. Sometimes those stories are the same, and sometimes they are different. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get two stories intertwined to make a glorious whole. I think a picture book draws on all the tools in a writer’s toolbox. Metaphor, poetry, alliteration, allegory, lyricism, onomatopoeia – all the big words. You’re writing not just for little kids who might not be able to read at all, or who might only be able to pick out a couple of words here and there, but also for the teachers and parents who may have to read that book over and over a thousand times. So it has to be compelling, it has to be fun, and interesting to look at, and I think its neat if you can find something new in every reading. I like busy picture books. Picture books are the hardest things to do well. This is not vibes. This is fact.
Writing on vibes rather than rules and set models is so important. I reckon people have done it across time. What were some delights and surprises in writing The Dream Factory? Did you have a starting point?
The pandemic lockdown inspired the story of The Dream Factory. That sense of every day being the same, dull, boring – yet scary – day on repeat. Hideous. I knew I didn’t want a singular protagonist that saves the day. The town was the protagonist, and the day was saved by a random event. Because that’s life, isn’t it? So many things happen that you have zero control over. Your rent goes up, you get sick, you win the lottery, your oven breaks. In The Dream Factory, the factory breaks down, has a terrible effect on everyone, and then gets fixed. Nothing anyone can do about it. It just happens. Just like life.
The best surprise was having Zak Ātea consent to illustrating it. It was a thousand times better than anything my own head could have dreamed up. She is fire.
Indeed. Zak’s work is breathtaking! What captivates you as a reader of children’s books. What have you read in the past year or so that has really stuck?
I’ve been reading a lot of books on economics and politics this year. I write sci-fi books set on other worlds, and it’s helpful to have an understanding of economic and political systems so that I can create coherent, believable, alternate societies. Boring! I’m boring myself just talking about it.
But my favourite kinds of children’s books are magical and scifi ones. I’m not interested in contemporary, everyday events. Give me dragons and portals and dystopian worlds please! Take me out of this place and put me somewhere else.
And to rephrase my first question. Why does children’s literature in Aotearoa matter so much?
It’s funny isn’t it, the rhetoric the government spews about wanting to increase literacy rates in schools, and yet they put the absolute minimum into funding school libraries and librarians and the people who write the books that children are reading. Funny, not. Children’s lit matters, not just because we want to increase literacy rates. Because we want our kids to see themselves on the page, and to deem themselves worthy of being written about. Our kids should feel like they too can be writers one day, and that their experiences are interesting and book-worthy! A child who loves reading grows up into an adult who loves reading. And those adults buy books and support the industry. Children’s lit is a gateway drug to a lifetime of learning and pleasure. It’s the most important thing in the world.
And a big toast to that! Learning and pleasure, let’s keep singing that vital combination from the rooftops.
Zak Ātea
I adore your illustrations for The Dream Factory. Can you tell me what media you used? I am always curious what illustrators use to create their artworks.
It’s all digital using Procreate and a bit of photoshop. I’m an oil painter by trade, and sadly oil painting isn’t feasible when you’re illustrating a book like this (maybe one day I’ll try it), so I try to mimic the effects of painting and layering in my digital work. I create alot of my brushes I use in Procreate from real life textures to get the desired effects, there’s just so much you can do with technology, then I work it like I would a normal painting, I pretend every layer is wet, and I build it up overtime.
I love the way you catch and enhance the story’s mood so exquisitely, so richly. What mattered to you as you created your visual feast?
Atmosphere mattered the most to me, dreams are atmospheric, theyre visceral and fleeting, so I was trying to find a way to show that. I wanted the visuals to feel thick and heavy, but for the age group of tamariki we were aiming at, it also needed to be soft and smooth, nothing harsh.I wanted it to feel like you could reach out and touch everything. I love intangibles, the feelings that are evoked with certain colours, textures and shapes, so that plays a huge part in the illustrations as well, but overall it was ALOT of trial and error.
Illustrators are such vital contributors to the charisma of children’s picture books. Do you have some favourites, whether local or overseas, contemporary or less recent?
It’s gotta be Oliver Jeffers, he captures everything perfectly, he’s a real visual communicator, not just for kids, but he somehow gets adults (me) to enjoy his books and work too. He’s the kind of all encompassing artist that makes magic happen. Another is Molly Mendoza, look up their work, their work in children’s books and graphic novels are out of this world. Closer to home here in Aotearoa, big fan of Phoebe Morris, ever since uni I quietly looked up to her and her illustrations, her visual world is a personal fave of mine.
Poetry Box 