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.
Alex O’Connell has selected Hattie by Frida Nilsson as The Times Children’s Book of the Week. “Hattie is from the Pippi Longstocking school of clever, anti-establishment little girls who have the capacity for misrule until their conscience kicks in, their hearts turn to fondant and they return to the path of righteousness (while avoiding piety)… Read more »
Gecko Press and Walker Books Australia want to encourage reading and classroom read-aloud experiences, and to support schools and public libraries dealing with the escalating COVID-19 outbreak. If you are a teacher, librarian or bookseller moving your storytimes or read-alouds online and wish to share Gecko Press titles, please do not hesitate to get in… Read more »
The Gecko Press online store will be temporarily closing from the 24th of March 2020 as our staff will be working from home and will not have access to our stock room. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and cannot wait to reopen once it is safe and advisable for us to… Read more »
Julie Danielson has reviewed Tell Me for her blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: I read just this morning about a well-reviewed book about sex, aimed at children and written by a sex educator, causing all kinds of controversy at a Massachusetts school. To be clear, I haven’t read that particular book, but generally speaking these… Read more »
Frida Nilsson is one of Sweden’s most talented children’s book authors. Her writing is characterised by playfulness, humour and sincerity, and has been compared to the work of Roald Dahl and Barbro Lindgren. Frida has received numerous Swedish and international prizes, including the James Krüss Award for International Children’s Literature, the August Prize, the German Youth Literature Prize and the Astrid Lindgren Prize.
Frida is the author of The Ice Sea Pirates (2017) and Hattie (out March 2020).
