A Writers Journey
Statement #1
Artist and writer Jeanette Goode lives on the West Coast of the South Island, right where the little blues live. After a 30-year career in the film industry, she decided to follow her passion and began writing & illustrating children’s books. A Little Blue is the first book in a series created by Jeanette about threatened species of Aotearoa New Zealand. It is endorsed by the West Coast Penguin Trust, with a donation from every sale of the book going toward conservation and protection of the kororā, little blue penguins
“When I wrote the first draft of A Little Blue I was living on the Coast Road in a friends batch set in the rocks. The waves would sometimes go right under the batch. There were little blue penguins nesting in the flax all around.
I now live at the mouth of the Nile River in Charleston with an art studio on the old wharf overlooking the Buller River in Westport.
The Nile River is a starkly beautiful place with big dramatic skies, surging tides and the constant river. It is home to little blue penguins who have a colony behind the house. When I came to live here, I felt I was walking into my own story.” – Jeanette Goode