Nurture meets nature
Whether it is wrestling a flamboyance of flamingos or a serious health condition, writer Samantha Montgomerie is up for the challenge.
The writer of educational texts, poetry and children's books loves nothing more than tapping into her own "inner child" to create stories that will capture the imagination of children.
Many of her ideas come from everyday life. Her most recent project has been inspired by her family's regular holidays to the Marlborough Sounds.
"We've had wonderful experiences with Hector's dolphins there kayaking which has made us really aware of that really unique environment."
As the 2025 College of Education's Children's Writer in Residence, its six-month residency is allowing her to work on a middle-grade novel about a young girl from the United Kingdom who comes to New Zealand to reconnect with her grandparents and discovers an orphaned Hector's dolphin.
She discovers the dolphin's mother has been caught in a gill net and begins to learn about the dolphins' plight, becoming an advocate for change to protect them.
"I know working as a teacher for, what, 25 years now, I do think this younger generation has inherited quite a difficult phase that our planet's in, and they feel quite anxious about it. So, I think that was in the back of my mind when I was thinking about this story."
She wants the story to give readers a sense of advocacy.
"What they could do to help in small ways — both our, you know, endemic species that are being impacted, but also the planet as a whole."
A bonus of this story had been her own journey researching the book and learning about the work Prof Liz Slooten had done to advocate for the dolphins.
She had been shocked to learn how long it had taken as a country to learn about the country's oceans and its occupants.
"It's been a really rewarding journey."
The environmental focus is also apparent in another short piece she is writing about a teenager who goes to Scott Base with his father, who is taking core ice samples.
"So I'm learning all about that, about how they're tracking climate change down there. I've got to admit, I've spent about a week just absorbed in reading about that."
One of her other favourite stories came about after taking her niece to the zoo and witnessing her being transfixed by the flamingos.
"And that was the idea of, you know, writing a story of coming home, a young child finding their house overtaken with flamingos."
But she also likes to tackle more serious issues. After a conversation with a friend about how she manages her son's diabetes when he plays sport, she decided to write a children's book about diabetes and began to research the condition and ways to manage it with the help of Diabetes Support Otago.
Montgomerie, an English literature graduate, has a love of Shakespeare and Jane Austen that she is also keen to share with young readers.
"Being a teacher, I think kids love Shakespeare and they love history and I often think wouldn't it be great to write a story about something they'll connect with. Like the injustice of women not being able to act on the stage."
So she has just finished a junior fiction book about a young girl, a seamstress at the Globe Theatre in the United Kingdom, who wants to act on stage but only males are allowed, so when an actor gets sick she disguises herself using her costuming skills to get on stage.
"That was a really great text to write. So sometimes the idea comes from a passion of mine as well."
That passion for literature, reading and writing has been with her since she was a child. She often takes the collection of books she used to write as a child on school visits to encourage the next generation of readers and writers.
"They're all handwritten with beautiful covers. So I think writing has always been there in the background."
Her grandmother, recognising her interest in writing, bought her a typewriter when she was 7 or 8 years old.
But when she was growing up, New Zealand authors rarely visited her schools.
"I didn't think it was something you could become or do. I've always loved literature and reading and books have been the centre of my working life."
When Montgomerie left university with an English degree, she worked as a librarian at Waikato University for a year before she decided to train as an English teacher.
Sixteen years ago, when her son was born, she re-discovered her love of picture books and children's literature.
During that time, she continued to write poetry, a genre she loves, and short-form text, "trying her hand" at writing children's stories, but about 10 years ago she decided to start sending some of her work "out into the world".
"Looking back, I don't know why I didn't do it earlier."
She began to get published in poetry anthologies, placed in competitions and asked along to reading events. She joined a group of English teachers called the Ink Pot Collective who met once a month to share their writing.
"I really enjoyed that journey. A lot of my poetry does generally reflect a connection with the landscape. I'm a really keen outdoors person, so we do a lot of kayaking, mountainbiking, camping and I just love being out on the water, swimming in the ocean."
Then one of her children's stories was picked up by Sunshine Books and the rest, as they say, is history. She began writing educational readers for children and about six years ago was picked up by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom.
"I've had a steady stream of work with them. I really like a lot of the work I do — the HarperCollins series in particular, they really love quirky, imaginative, funny texts."
She has particularly enjoyed working on its "Books Like Me" publishing line which publishes texts reflecting today's diverse culture, such as children living in extended family situations or with same gender parents.
"It's been a really exciting range of work that has come through."
Last year, she was invited to the annual HarperCollins author party in London, a rare opportunity for a New Zealand author. It was a great chance to meet other writers, learn about their work and talk about writing and the industry. It was also an opportunity to visit other publishers and meet HarperCollins staff face to face.
"It was magical, the whole thing was a celebration and it felt like a great achievement to be one of the authors to make the list."
She was invited to attend again this year, but decided not to go as she would miss part of the residency.
Montgomerie has juggled the writing projects alongside fulltime teaching, and even for a short time as head of English, writing in weekends and evenings whenever she could grab the time.
"I'm an active relaxer so writing was always enjoyable, but I've definitely chosen to write short form while I've been teaching fulltime."
She has dropped down to part-time and even taken the odd year off to keep the writing going, but she enjoys teaching and has always returned.
"I've had years of doing variations of that."
As a result, her junior novel The Cloudkeepers , which was shortlisted for the national Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award (for a junior novel manuscript), took four years to write, but the residency will enable her to get the first draft of the dolphin novel done by the time it finishes.
It has also enabled her to pick up two other junior fiction books.
"I don't think I would have been able to do that without this residency, to be able to work on my novel and do these other projects with their tight deadlines as well. It's such a gift to have time and space."
Montgomerie has also just finished a 10-book phonetics series for Penguin Random House in the United Kingdom.
"That's my first contract with Penguin, and they had such a tight deadline around the project that I think if I'd been teaching, there was no way I would have been able to accept it."
However, she still loves teaching and being around children, believing that is what has kept her motivated to continue writing.
"I do feel like teaching and writing work really well together, especially as I'm always gravitating towards the readers and hearing what kids love in books. It brings me a lot of joy."
Her biggest hope is that someone steps up to fund the residency in the future.
"I do find it really sad to think that there could be so many people like me juggling a career in another field and trying to write as well ... all that great literature might not be written, especially with our New Zealand lens on stories."
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For Pākehā it shows that te reo is not going to go away, nor need it be feared. It is something uniquely of this place that can contribute to everyone's sense of belonging. The title Te Whare Tiwekaweka – which can be translated as The Messy House – suggests neither a melting pot monoculture nor a utopian dream, but rather a work in progress. A home that is untidy yet alive.
