Gecko Press Blog

Visiting children’s book artists always have the difficulty of trying to address two groups – the children who read their books and the adults who buy them. Touring French picture book artists Eric Veillé and Clotilde Perrin dealt with the problem with Gallic aplomb.

Award-winning French picture book author-illustrators Clotilde Perrin (Inside the Villains) and Eric Veillé (Encyclopedia of Grannies and My Pictures after the Storm) are touring New Zealand in May for the Embassy of France’s Les Petits Kiwis (Reading Kiwis) Festival in association with Gecko Press, Alliance Francaise and Institut Francais.

Harsu and the Werestoat is a surprising read. Else has built a fantastical world, rich in detail and imagination. It is a book that will delight those that tumble into Harsu’s world.

We are happy to announce that Wolfy and The Visitor were both included in the Children’s Book Committee Best Children’s Books of the Year list.

Meet Eric Veillé and check his new book, Encyclopedia of Grannies, which is an offbeat book full of word play and humour, answering all your questions about grandmas – especially the ones you never thought to ask.

We are pleased to announce that Inside the Villains by Clotilde Perrin is in shortlist for the English 4-11 Picture Book Awards 2019 in Non-Fiction 7 – 11 nomination.

For Gecko Press, we are looking for what we call curiously good books — books of strong character and good heart, with stories that parents and children will want to read hundreds of times. We are looking for books we feel we haven’t seen before with a harmonious combination of picture and story that sets up an immense hum, larger than the sum of its parts.

After reading The Encyclopedia of Grannies, curiously good readers from Wardini Books’s 7-to-9-year-old Book Club came up with new questions for the ‘Wisdom’ page.

This is such a gripping, marvellous book I can’t wait for you to discover its magical highways, its fascinations and its gripping secrets. I do hope this is the first of a series! Highly recommended.

With Barbara Else’s Harsu and the Werestoat release this month, we asked Barbara about her favourite time-travel books for middle-readers that Harsu’s fans could also enjoy. It is a great list of books worth checking at your favourite book store or library.