Gecko Press Blog

Translating rhyming texts is pretty hard, particularly when the text is so short and condensed. Of all the editions, James Brown’s versions deviate the most from the original text, but in a good way. They always surprise me, and I love it. He manages to capture the spirit of the text, while bringing his own imagination and poetry to it

Leo Timmers shares an insight into the work that went into making his latest book, Where Is The Dragon? From the first dummy and designing the characters to the execution of the final art and cover.

While I was making the book, I had the image of a small child playing in his room with a small basket, creating a wacky adventure with the random objects he comes across. So I wanted a little man with a suitcase—that simple!

The story emerged from these drawings. After struggling for months, I suddenly had the whole story finished in an hour. Pure magic, and very thrilling. You just never know which new idea is around the corner.

Though many are focused in the new year on the year ahead, at Gecko Press we find ourselves looking further ahead to plan the books we want to publish in 2022.

Read on for the hows and whys of our book choosing process and reflections on publishing post-2020.

Reading aloud is a key tool in a babysitter’s kit. It can bring children together from different parts of the house, calm them or cheer them up, signal that it is sleep time—your choice of book and how you read will depend on what is needed.

Read on for reading aloud tips for all babysitting scenarios.

We often get asked for recommendations for a particular age of a child so this month’s book list is by the Gecko Press team recommending our top picks from our shelves to help with your gift buying this season.

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.

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.

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.