Jeannie Baker

AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

JEANNIE Baker is a multi-award winning author and illustrator of a number of children’s picture books, perhaps most notable of which is Where the Forest meets the Sea, CBCA Picture Book of the Year in 1988.

Her most recent book Circle traces the flight of the bar-tailed godwits, which are large longbilled, long-legged migratory birds. This endangered Australian shorebird, which are capable of undertaking long unbroken flights from Alaska to Australia and New Zealand. In order to create Circle, Baker journeyed across the globe to observe godwits to the wild, remote landscapes of Alaska and then to China and South Korea. The book serves to reminds us that everything is interconnected and that we should strive to protect our global ecosystem, in which there is a delicate balance. Circle won the Children’s Australian Independent Booksellers award in 2017.

While her genre is children’s jeanniebaker.com walkerbooks.com.au bit.ly/2q9t39V Creating the Circle video: bit.ly/2E89int Teacher’s notes for the Circle: literature, many of the artworks used in her picture books have been exhibited nationally and internationally. The collages from this book are currently on tour in Queensland.

Baker’s work is also featured in a number of videos on YouTube and two self-directed short documentaries Where the Forest Meets the Sea and The Story of Rosy Dock, which explores the effects of introduced species on the Australian environment and indigenous species. Brisbane: Bundaberg: