Crowe, Andrew: - Andrew Crowe is a bestselling New Zealand author with a special interest in helping make nature accessible to beginners of all ages. He has written over 40 nature books covering seashells, insects, spiders, birds and other animals and plants. Andrew has won numerous New Zealand book awards, including the Margaret Mahy Medal in 2009 for his overall contribution to children's literature and the Ashton Wylie Award in 2005 for a biography for teenagers on the Dalai Lama. It was his interest in the natural world and its importance to Maori that led him to explore the indigenous links between the first peoples of New Zealand and their voyaging ancestors.