A story highlighting the week leading up to the narrator’s mother’s funeral, with all its sadness and confusion and overwhelming sense of loss. Support comes from the narrator’s extended family – and the sense that her many aunties will continue to be there in the future, providing the kind of support and love that usually comes from a mother. The text includes references to a girl’s first period.

This pack contains response activities complete with activity explainer videos for supporting teaching and learning reading strategies including:

• Skim and Scan activities
• Summarise activities
• Questioning activities
• Inference activities
• Making Connections activities
• Visualising activities

Themes explored include: aunty, change, changing body, Cook Island, culture, death, family, funeral, grief, loss, menstruation, Pacific, period, puberty, Ngutu‘are tangata, resilience, support, wellbeing, whānau