The Gecko Annual features a dictionary of odd words that come in handy on car trips, a sophisticated "spot the similarity", a found poem from school newsletters, a maths-nerd's memoir full of tricky logic puzzles, comics that embrace other worlds, a very unlucky zebra, and top-class fiction that spans Christchurch Botanic Gardens in the 19th century, the loss of a brother, a Kiwi beach holiday, and a Fontanian boarding school. This is a book for readers who are hungry for sophisticated, wide-ranging, and challenging content. It aims to revitalize the reading experience for this age group and create lifetime readers.