Holiday Mahi by André Ngāpō is a reflective fiction text that weaves everyday family life with cultural values to explore responsibility, perseverance, and helping others. Through the voice of Api, a young boy spending the school holidays with his cousin Tyson, the story follows a week of working in a māra kai instead of enjoying a lazy break. What begins as frustration and rivalry gradually becomes a lesson in effort, empathy, and teamwork as Api learns new skills, pushes through tiredness, and reflects on what it really means to contribute. The competitive relationship between the cousins is central to the narrative, highlighting how comparisons can undermine confidence but also how growth can happen when priorities shift from winning to helping. Warm, realistic, and gently humorous, the text supports students to understand work ethic, family expectations, and personal growth through lived experience and voice. 

The text is ideal for integrated learning across literacy and health, supporting inquiry into relationships, resilience, responsibility, and contributing to whānau and community life in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This pack contains a range of response activities complete with activity explainer videos for exploring thinking skills and developing emotional understandings and compassionate inquiry including:

• Blooms Higher Order Thinking activities
• Book Club guide for deepening text discussion
• A range of activities to explore emotional understanding, compassionate inquiry, empathy development, vocabulary and developing skills for self and co-regulation.

Curriculum Phase: Phase 2
Year Level: Year 4

English (NZC Levels 2–3): reading for meaning and enjoyment, analysing character thoughts and actions, understanding narrative structure, making connections to personal experience, exploring theme and dialogue

Health and Physical Education: wellbeing, relationships, perseverance, teamwork, managing emotions, contributing to others

Social Sciences – Aotearoa New Zealand Histories: family and community life, work and responsibility, continuity and change, identity and belonging

Text type: Fiction, personal recount, reflective narrative

Key words include: mahi, māra kai, holidays, family, whānau, cousins, rivalry, competition, helping others, responsibility, perseverance, resilience, teamwork, effort, contribution, relationships, learning new skills, work ethic, empathy, growth, cooperation, belonging