Gecko Press Blog

Eirlys Hunter is off to Rome this December for the awards ceremony of Premio Strega Ragazze e Ragazzi 2023, where The Mapmakers’ Race is one of three finalists in the 11+ category.

Each year the International Youth Library based in Munich, Germany publishes a catalogue called the White Ravens with a selection of notable books from around the world.

The Grizzled Grist Does Not Exist by Juliette MacIver and Sarah Davis was selected as a White Raven 2023—the only Aotearoa New Zealand book to be selected.

This month we’re celebrating the release of my latest picture book Have You Seen Dinosaur?, lovingly published by the wonderful Gecko Press. So in honour of this event I’d like to invite you into my studio.

Hello! I’m Giselle, author and illustrator of The Observologist: A Handbook for Mounting Very Small Scientific Expeditions.

I’m absolutely fascinated by all the smallest details in nature. I especially love tiny invertebrates. I wrote this book because I want to share all my favourite things about them with other people.

This weekend, illustrator Tokerau Brown visited Wellington bookshops to sign copies of Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai. Unity Books Wellington and Good Books both hosted him.

To celebrate the release of Have You Seen Dinosaur?, author/illustrator David Barrow painted characters from the book in the window of Next Page Books in the United Kingdom.

Giselle Clarkson, author of The Observologist (released next month), is one of nine Aotearoa artists awarded a 2023 Arts Foundation Laureate.

Giselle received the Mallinson Rendel Illustrators Award, awarded every two years to a children’s book illustrator.

We wanted to expose the children in the story to real hardships and dangers, the same ones faced by polar explorers in historical times. Some important themes were endurance, patience, the hope for survival and rescue.

By Anna Hoek-Sims of UBS Otago, Emerging Bookseller of the Year 2023

Kia ora!

I’ve been an avid reader and a bookaholic from a very young age.

This book is a true co-creation between my son Kerehi Grace, the illustrator Tokerau Brown, and me. Sometimes, as the book was being invented, Toki (Tokerau) would share a picture, and I’d get a shiver—a feeling that the picture contains life inside it, is itself alive.