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Story: Publishing

Our nation's story

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<em>Our nation's story</em>

Whitcombe and Tombs sold huge numbers of textbooks to New Zealand and Australian schools. Our nation's story was a history of Britain, not New Zealand, which formed the centre of the history curriculum in New Zealand primary schools from the mid-1920s until the 1940s. It told the story in a series of books aimed at Standards 3 to 6 (Years 5 to 8). The Readers series was an even more successful set of publications, beginning as The Pacific Readers and later supplemented by Live Readers and Progressive Readers.

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Mataura & Districts Historical Society

Reference: MT2012.128.4

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How to cite this page

Elizabeth Caffin, Publishing – Educational publishing and Whitcombe and Tombs, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/object/42249/our-nations-story (accessed 25 June 2026).

Story by Elizabeth Caffin, published 2 August 2013.