“A school library is not a luxury, it is a necessity”
The taonga of a school library is hard to get back— it is not a piece of paper to be slid into a file. It is a precious space that needs our protection, our care, our aroha and our strength to protect it or maybe it will be filed away forever, lost.
Rain like a thunderstorm — the My Happy Life series wraps up
The My Happy Life chapter book series is one of the most acclaimed and loved we’ve published at Gecko Press. The books have attached themselves firmly to many of us working with them over the years, so as booksellers, publishers and designers, we asked ourselves what we’ve enjoyed most about My Happy Life.
Egg & Spoon: Author Alexandra Tylee interviews Illustrator Giselle Clarkson
I had a note by my computer screen with the colours from the brief: red, pink, summer orange, gold, paperbag brown, no black. The colours make a feeling and you take that feeling and turn it into a picture.
And they’re delicious colours. They make food look good.
Egg & Spoon: Illustrator Giselle Clarkson interviews Author Alexandra Tylee
In the introduction for the book, you’ve written that if Pipi was a cake, she would be this glorious towering sponge cake. If you were a cake, what would you be?
If I was a cake, I love the idea of a tall wobbly sponge and defying all odds.
Timeline Science and Technology: Q&A with Peter Goes
I wanted to make an up-to-date version of a timeline because at school, timelines helped me a great deal to understand history. Those simple lines with dates and pictures gave me a better overview and understanding of history than text. It is a way to create order in a sometimes-chaotic string of events. It helps you see similarities, influences and coincidences.
Anete Melece is a Latvian author and illustrator. On Wednesday 23rd September she took over the Gecko Press Instagram account to share her journey of becoming a freelance illustrator, how she created The Kiosk, and what she is working on now.
I’d like to share some of my favourite wordless or silent picturebooks in the hope that this will encourage you to become familiar with silent books and their particular gifts.
Wordless picture books can be magical. With no text pulling our eyes away, adults and children can explore the pictures together, and together tell the story.
In typical Gecko Press fashion, Impossible inventions is physically lovely, with paper you want to smush your cheeks against and colours you want to eat”
Giselle Clarkson, The Sapling
One message shines from the Gecko list:
children deserve quality.
Your Weekend, Dominion Post
I love Gecko Press … This is a shameless endorsement.
Meg Rosoff, author and winner of the ALMA 2016
You know when a story is so good you literally forget your surroundings and are quickly enveloped in its telling. The Ice Sea Pirates is such a book and at times I didn't want to leave...
Laura Patricia Rose, Blog Tour: The Ice Sea Pirates