Tim Tipene

Tim Tipene is the author of many popular children’s fiction titles, including Kura Toa: Warrior School, Taming the Taniwha, and Haere–Farewell, Jack, Farewell, which won the Honour Award in the Picture Book category of the NZ Post Book Awards. His first children’s book, The Wooden Fish, was published in 1999 and covers the themes of family, love, and conservation.

In 1994, Tipene founded the community organization Warrior Kids, which offers programs designed to teach emotional management, communication skills, and behavioral responsibility to angry and at-risk children. “To heal may mean to cry a river,” says Tipene. “Only a warrior could do that.” He is a trained counselor with a graduate certificate in child and adolescent mental health, and he has taught self defense to women and facilitated anger management programs for men over the many years he has devoted to strengthening his community.

Tipene also teaches three disciplines of martial arts, and he strives to emphasize the positive, life-changing aspects of martial arts above also else. Having been a victim of violence in his own childhood, he fully understands the need to protect oneself. But more importantly, he respects the need to control oneself.