Gecko Press Blog

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.

Watching insects and looking for other tiny, interesting things genuinely is one of my favourite hobbies, and the content of The Observologist is all the stuff I talk about and point out when I’m walking with my nieces and nephews. Putting it all down in a book felt like a very logical thing to do.

By Mel Schuit of Let’s Talk Picture Books Mel Schuit is one of our favourite children’s book bloggers, especially for her “Let’s talk illustrators” interviews with children’s book illustrators, full of interesting questions about the process of bookmaking. This month, we are releasing our first leperello—Look by Gavin Bishop—so we are sharing Mel’s book list… Read more »