Gusto & Gecko Travel to Kenya (Longy Han, illus by Elinor Hagg, Han Creative, distributed by INT Books)

Longy Han’s crowd-funded picture book Gusto & Gecko Travel to Kenya is the first in the ‘Curious Travels of Gusto & Gecko’ series for readers aged five to eight. Aiming to inspire children’s curiosity and broaden their awareness of the world they live in, each book will be set in a different location. The first story follows two dinosaurs Gusto and Gecko as they discover Kenya, stumble across a lion and then do everything they can to escape him! Along the way they meet other African animals and explore their natural habitats. Han raised $10,000 through the crowd-funding site Pozible to complete this project and challenge traditional publishing processes. Her advocacy for literacy, which was a driving factor in her crowd-funding proposal, is evident throughout Gusto & Gecko, which uses collective nouns and repetition and introduces young readers to different cultures, landscapes and animals in simple but engaging prose. Elinor Hagg won a competition to illustrate the book, and her colourful imagery fits Han’s writing perfectly; it’s fun and a bit offbeat. Readers are invited to pore over the imagery to find the hiding lion, and Gusto and Gecko as they try to escape him. This is a wonderful text for children to learn about Kenya and its animals, and after I’m sure readers will be excited to see where these two little dinosaurs are off to next.

Sarah Coull is a freelance writer and reviewer who has worked as a children’s bookseller and an editor for an educational publisher

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews