The HELL Reading Challenge
The HELL Reading Challenge is a well-established programme that has been hugely successful in getting tamariki reading and enjoying the pleasures of stories — with the bonus of free pizza rewards!
We are very excited to be continuing our partnership with HELL Pizza. Their enthusiasm for children’s reading and generous ongoing commitment is awesome.
Teachers, librarians and parents have been telling us how the HELL Reading Challenge has hooked so many reluctant readers into books. We want even more young readers to discover the thrill of a great book.
The HELL Reading Challenge is free, and it is so easy! Children receive a stamp on their pizza wheel for each book they read. Once they have read seven books, children can exchange their completed pizza wheel for a free 333 kids’ pizza at HELL.
To find out more about how the HELL Reading Challenge works, download the 2023 HELL Reading Challenge manual here
Registrations for the 2023 HELL Reading Challenge are now open.
Schools and libraries can register and order pizza wheels here
If you're a parent or caregiver and want to get pizza wheels for your tamariki, please ask at your local library or school.
Download a printable 2023 HELL Reading Challenge book review card here
Download the 2023 HELL Reading Challenge poster here
If you have any questions about the HELL Reading Challenge, please email readingchallenge@nzbookawards.org.nz
You can also keep up to date with Reading Challenge news on the HELL Reading Challenge Facebook page
Hell's Great NZ Book Trip
Hell's Great NZ Book Trip includes New Zealand themed teaching resources, such as lesson plans and activities, as well as author events, competitions and other new activities, which will be added throughout the year.
Whether you would like to dip in and be inspired by a few resources, or journey with us through all the various lesson plans and activities – we will leave that to you. What’s important is that our tamariki have fun and enjoy their reading journey. Wherever it takes them.
So come along on HELL’s Great NZ Book Trip around New Zealand – we hope you enjoy what Aotearoa has to offer!
Teaching resources
To help you on your own journey, we’re including potential lesson plans and activities to kickstart your own Book Trip.
Each resource can be used as an individual shared reading lesson, or as part of a unit of study on New Zealand authors. We hope that these will be a great starting point in bringing more New Zealand content into your classroom.
Download the Year 3 & 4 Lesson Plans
Download the Year 3 & 4 Activity Sheets
Years 5 & 6
Download the Year 5 & 6 Lesson Plans
Download the Year 5 & 6 Activity Sheets
Track your journey on your very own map
To help tamariki track their own journeys around the motu, we’ve designed a map, where they can mark off places they’ve visited – either over the holidays or travelling by book. This can be used individually or in a classroom and library setting.
Author events
As part of HELL’s Great NZ Book Trip, some of New Zealand’s most loved children’s authors and illustrators are being live-streamed to classrooms around the country.
The most recent Book Trip author event featured Mat Tait, winner of the 2023 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year. Mat read from his award-winning book Te Wehenga: The Separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku and answered questions that had been sent in by students around Aotearoa. You can watch a video of this event here.
And if you’d like to watch other author readings and Q&A sessions that have taken place as part of HELL’s Great NZ Book Trip, you’ll find recordings of all events here.
2023 HELL Reading Challenge – Key dates
Registrations for the 2023 HELL Reading Challenge are now open.
Last date for ordering 2023 pizza wheels (stocks permitting): 4 December 2023
Last date for redeeming completed 2023 wheels: 31 January 2024
The New Zealand Book Awards Trust is very grateful to HELL Pizza for their sponsorship of the Reading Challenge. For more information on HELL and our other funders, click here.