Stargazer
When Your World Changes
A story for children and adults, inspired by a real blind ostrich and the things she taught me about paying attention when the world changes.
Sometimes the world around us changes. Stargazer is a story about slowing down, noticing what is around us, and finding connection when things no longer feel quite the same.
The first Stargazer children’s picture book is now in development.
Concept cover - final artwork and design may change.
Before there was a story, there was a real Stargazer
Stargazer was a blind ostrich I cared for many years ago while managing an ostrich chick farm. She was different from the other chicks from the beginning. She grew more slowly, but she grew strong. Her movements were gentle and deliberate, and because she couldn’t see, she experienced the world through her other senses. She would become still, lift her head and take in what was happening around her. That’s how she got her name.
I didn’t know then that Stargazer would come back into my life many years later.
Why Stargazer came back
Years later, my work took me into emergency management. I began hearing stories about what happened after emergencies and disasters, when the immediate danger had passed, but people’s worlds hadn't simply returned to how they were before. One story that has stayed with me is about children affected by severe flooding who didn’t want to go to school when it rained again. The rain had come to mean something different.
It made me think about what we offer children when their world changes through disasters, illness, grief, moving home, or other experiences that disrupt what once felt familiar. And I thought about Stargazer. She didn’t experience the world in the same way as those around her. She slowed down and noticed when the others were running around in circles. She used what she had available to understand what was happening around her. That became the beginning of the book.
Stargazer: When Your World Changes
Stargazer is a picture book about a blind ostrich whose world changes. It began as a story for children, but as I shared early versions with others, adults began finding their own meaning in Stargazer too. The story seemed to resonate across different ages, experiences and kinds of change.
Stargazer doesn’t tell us how we should feel, or simply ask us to be brave or calm. She invites us to experience the world alongside her - to slow down, pay attention and notice what becomes possible when we do.
Stargazer is a companion rather than a set of instructions. For a child, that experience might be shared with a trusted adult. For an adult, Stargazer can be experienced in their own way.
The manuscript is complete, and the book is moving through the next stages of its development. Its visual world will bring together elements of Australia, where the real Stargazer lived, and Aotearoa New Zealand, where her story is now being brought back to life.
Over time, I’ve realised that Stargazer’s story carries ideas I have been exploring in my work for many years. At the heart of that work has been connection - how we connect with ourselves, with one another and with the living world around us, and what happens when those connections are disrupted.
Stargazer gives me a different way to explore those ideas. Through story, rather than explanation, we can experience them for ourselves.
Stargazer leaves us with some questions:
What happens when we stop rushing to respond?
What might we notice if we pay attention differently?
How do we reconnect with ourselves, with one another and with the world around us as things change?
Being a Stargazer is not about having all of the answers. It is about remembering what to come back to: paying attention, staying connected, and noticing what is happening around us.
What would Stargazer do?
The book is the beginning
I am starting with one story, but my dream for Stargazer is bigger than one book. Already, Stargazer is beginning to step beyond the page. Ohana Keepsakes is currently creating this beautiful needle-felted Stargazer, inspired by the real Stargazer and the character she is becoming through the book.
Over time, I want to explore how Stargazer might grow through stories, objects and experiences that invite children and adults to connect with one another and the living world around them, and make sense of change together. Exactly what that will become is still emerging. For now, I’m starting where Stargazer would: by paying attention and seeing where the journey takes us.
Follow Stargazers Journey
Stargazer is only just beginning. Join me as the book comes to life and be among the first to hear about preorders, behind-the-scenes developments and what Stargazer becomes next.