Jean Batten (1909 - 1982)

Websites

Jean Batten continues to fascinate and inspire New Zealanders. Here are some reliable websites with lots of information for you to investigate.

Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Te Ara is an excellent starting point for all questions about New Zealand Aotearoa. It has information covering Jean Batten's early life, her flying career leading to her long distance flights, and her relationship with her mother.

• Search for your keywords 'Jean Batten'.
• Choose Biographies to find her life story under Batten, Jean Gardner.

NZHistory

This is another great website for New Zealand topics. If we go all the way down the page we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, so the information is well-researched and reliable. Search for 'Jean Batten' to find her biography.

Tips: We like sites like this because they’re reliable. You can tell because of their web address – they have either .govt or .ac, meaning they are from government or educational organisations. They’re also New Zealand sites, so relevant for us.

NZEDGE Legends

NZEDGE was set up by a New Zealand businessman to celebrate New Zealand culture, innovation and achievement. Look down the list of Legends to find the story about Jean Batten.

Tips: Websites that have .com or .co in the address can have good information, but you need to assess how reliable it is. Check the About link on the website, if you can find one. That can tell you what the company’s mission and values are.

Articles and primary sources

These sites are good for finding in-depth articles and primary sources. Primary sources are things like letters, images, diaries, and other documents created during that period of history or soon after by people who were there.

DigitalNZ

DigitalNZ is search site that brings together lots of different historical resources about New Zealand topics.

• Search for 'Jean Batten'.
• You can choose to limit results to Images, Audio or Video clips.

There are restrictions on which photos you can freely use because of copyright but there are a lot that are free to use.

New Zealand Geographic Archive

This is one of the EPIC resources, a set of reliable databases covering lots of different topics. You may need a password from your school or local library to access it.

This archive is the entire collection of the New Zealand Geographic Magazine and has a lot of information on a wide variety of topics, including a comprehensive article about Jean Batten.

Biography In Context

Another EPIC resource, this overseas site has a mix of different sources.

• Search for 'Jean Batten' to bring up the topic page about her.
• This has magazine and newspaper articles as well as biographies.

Tips: To get to the EPIC resources you will need a password from your school librarian first. Or you can chat with one of our AnyQuestions librarians between 1 and 6pm Monday to Friday and they will help you online. Some EPIC databases may also be available through your public library.

Books

There have been many books written about Jean Batten - check out your local public or school library to see what they have. Some recommended titles are:

• Sky High: Jean Batten's incredible Flying Adventures by David Hill
• Jean Batten by Kevin Boon
• Jean Batten: the Garbo of the Skies by Ian McKersey
• Solo Flight by Jean Batten.

SCIS no: 1845871