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.
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.
In the introduction for the book, you’ve written that if Pipi was a cake, she would be this glorious towering sponge cake. If you were a cake, what would you be?
If I was a cake, I love the idea of a tall wobbly sponge and defying all odds.
Anete Melece is a Latvian author and illustrator. On Wednesday 23rd September she took over the Gecko Press Instagram account to share her journey of becoming a freelance illustrator, how she created The Kiosk, and what she is working on now.
Wordless picture books can be magical. With no text pulling our eyes away, adults and children can explore the pictures together, and together tell the story.
Mihi is Gavin Bishop’s beautiful new baby book that introduces ideas of me and my place in the world in the shape of a simple mihi or pepeha.
Gavin Bishop shares his mihi and how you can you the book Mihi to guide you to create your own.
