Gecko Press revives old children's favourites

It's one of those "why didn't I think of that?" ideas that seems so obvious — in hindsight. There are hundreds of wonderful children's books available in New Zealand, many written and published here, many more brought in from Britain and the United States. Exceptional New Zealand's children's writers have their work published in translation throughout the world. Yet children's books from another potential primary source — Europe — are relatively unavailable in English.

Wellington publisher Julia Marshall plans to change that, with her new Gecko Press. Gecko's first release, Donkeys, is a charming picture book yarn about an old donkey couple who fall out, set off to find new partners and find it's not so easy to replace a lifetime of love. When they reunite "there was just a chink of sorrow from their time apart".

"This book is good for people who are not quite divorced, I think," says Marshall.

Donkeys, written by Austrian Adelheid Dahimene and illustrated by Heide Stollinger, won the White Raven award at the important 2003 Bologna International Children's Book Fair, the Most Beautiful Book Award of Austria in 2002 and honours in the 2003 Austrian Children's Book Prize.

For the Gecko Press version, Marshall wanted a "name" translator to introduce the brand to the New Zealand market. To her surprise, she discovered Catherine Chidgey spoke German, and so the writer of novels In a Fishbone Church and Transformation became her Donkeys translator. At this stage Marshall has the New Zealand and Australian rights to distribute Gecko titles, but she also has the ambition to enter markets such as the United States, South Africa and India.

Marshall has always been interested in children's books but had no direct experience in book publishing or distribution, having lived in Sweden for 12 of the past 16 years, working in multi-language corporate magazine publishing. She started going to the Frankfurt Book Fair and noticed "terrific" children's books which were not being translated into English. But she wasn't sure where to get started, and so returned to New Zealand and worked for Bridget Williams Books to learn about the trade.

"I knew I wanted to start Gecko Press but didn't know where to start. I went back to Europe and discovered it is quite normal for publishers to start buying rights to other people's books. I went back the next year and made appointments with ones I liked the look of. When I looked at their catalogues, I could see they were being translated into other languages but not English. I thought that was very odd."

Marshall says it "wasn't hard at all" getting permission for the English version rights — "these publishers have been trying to crack the international market".

Her plan is to publish five books in Gecko's first year to build up a solid New Zealand base and build her credibility in the international market.

Her next two releases are My Friend Percy's Magical Gym Shoes, and Can You Whistle, Johanna — both novels for younger readers by Ulf Stark. She also plans to take New Zealand stories "back in the other direction". Obvious, really. In hindsight.

* Donkeys, by Adelheid Dahimene, illustrated by Heide Stollinger; translated by Catherine Chidgey, Gecko Press, $16.99