Gecko Press Blog

The responses to our July competition proved that some forms of entertainment will never go out of style.

Note: There are still tickets! Mercury Bay Area School and Gecko Press invite you to a themed dinner in celebration of the Tuia 250 events commemorating Captain Cook’s visit to Mercury Bay. Food, nutrition and hospitality teacher at Mercury Bay Area School, Joanna Mannington, is organising the event at the Flaxmill Bay campground during September… Read more »

Winter 2019 is the season of intrepid explorers in Gecko Press books: from Cam in Song of the River to Otto in Otto Goes North, from Zanzibar to The Runaways. And keep an eye out for Cornelia and the Jungle Machine later in the year.

We asked Katie at Time Out Bookstore in Auckland to recommend some stories for adventurers of all ages.

Featherston Booktown and Gecko Press are celebrating the joyous new anthology of much-loved poems and stories by Joy Cowley, The Gobbledegook Book, illustrated by Giselle Clarkson. Don’t miss this chance to hear Joy recite gobbledegook poems and stories. There will be books for sale with Mr Feathers Den, Joy and Giselle will be signing and a scrumptious… Read more »

Join us at Unity Books next Wednesday 7 August at 12pm to hear Catherine O’Loughlin (Penguin Books NZ), Mary McCallum (Mākaro Press), Robbie Burton (Potton & Burton) and Rachel Lawson (our own Gecko Press Associate Publisher) talk about shortlisted books for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adult.    

Catharina Valckx was born in 1957 in the Netherlands. She grew up in France and now lives in Amsterdam. She has written and illustrated over thirty books and been nominated four times for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Her books are published in more than eleven languages and have won numerous awards. Zanzibar, an uplifting,… Read more »

Leo Timmers’ new book, Monkey on the Run, has all the characteristics of his picture books. As an illustrator, Leo asks the reader to look—then look again, and again. He uses collisions, movement, problem-solving, colour and humour in his plot. Here he talks about how Monkey on the Run developed as a story, even demanding new technique.

Thanks for all of your responses to our June read-alouds competition. We’ve built a whole new list of picture books to read aloud.

A book read aloud in the classroom can stay with a child for a lifetime. I can still conjure the beautiful Scottish voice of one brilliant reader-alouder from my primary school, forty years later. My children frequently recommend books their teachers have read them—and hunt them down for re-reading. They both went to Te Kura… Read more »

Kimberly Andrews is a trained biologist and geologist who grew up in the Canadian Rockies and has lived and worked in Borneo, the UK and New Zealand. She illustrated Explore Aotearoa, shortlisted for the New Zealand children’s book award in 2018, and her first book both authored and illustrated, Puffin the Architect, was released in… Read more »