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[CCBC-Net] MINDERS and Alternative Presses
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From: leonardsma at aol.com <leonardsma>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:54:22 -0400
left over from last week...
I first became interested in small press publishing for children in the late 80s and it was while researching an article on the subject for SMALL PRESS magazine that I first contacted the CCBC and met Ginny Moore Kruse, who gave me a great many leads. I had begun attending the American Booksellers Assoc. conventions--what's now called BEA--and meeting small press publishers there. PARENTING Magazine's annual book awards, which I created and directed from their start in 1988, had a small press book on the first Ten Best Books of the Yr list--a picture book called CARIBOU ALPHABET, published by the Dog Ear Press, a Maine small press that later merged with Tilbury Press. Harriet Rohmer and I got to know each other not long after that. In the mid 1970s she had been a single mother living in San Francisco with a child enrolled in a Head Start program in the city's Mission District. There were children of many ethnic/national backgrounds in her son's small group, and HM recognized
a need in the lack of chiildren's books that reflected their backgrounds in some positive way. She got grant money together and eventually launched a small publishing company, Children's Book Press, which was dedicated to publishing bilingual picture books that presented culturally authentic stories and art for picture-book age children. The company is still going, more than 30 years later. And I think what Harriet and her colleagues did, and the success they had in placing their books in stores and libraries, etc., served as a model and catalyst for mainstream publishers to occasionally publish similar books.
Just Us was started by a couple living in New Jersey during the 1980s. Cheryl Willis Hudson had written and illustrated a picture book and couldn't find a publisher for it. Her husband Wade had a marketing background. They decided to take the leap and self-publish AFR0-BETS ABC BOOK. This was the beginning of a publishing company that grew and is still in business. Like Children's Book Press, the Hudsons found a niche in the market and were able to help fill it. Many small presses began as self-publishing ventures, and then morphed into something more broadly based. It was interesting to find that there were certain centers for small press publishing: the Bay Area and Toronto, among others.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman at education.wisc.edu>
Sent: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:57 am
Subject: [CCBC-Net] MINDERS and Alternative Presses
Leonard, As part of your discussion in MINDERS of the growing awareness of the need for books reflecting multicultural perspectives , I appreciated you discussing groundbreaking publishers such as Children's Book Press, Just Us Books, Writers and Readers' Black Butterfly imprint, and Lee & Low, among others. Since not everyone on CCBC-Net will have had a chance to read MINDERS yet, can you briefly mention who some of the "minders" were at these alternative presses? Do you have a sense of to what extent their work was on the radar of those in mainstream publishing? Megan -- Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 608/262-9503 schliesman at education.wisc.edu www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ _______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.e
ducation.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
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Received on Mon 28 Jul 2008 08:54:22 AM CDT
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:54:22 -0400
left over from last week...
I first became interested in small press publishing for children in the late 80s and it was while researching an article on the subject for SMALL PRESS magazine that I first contacted the CCBC and met Ginny Moore Kruse, who gave me a great many leads. I had begun attending the American Booksellers Assoc. conventions--what's now called BEA--and meeting small press publishers there. PARENTING Magazine's annual book awards, which I created and directed from their start in 1988, had a small press book on the first Ten Best Books of the Yr list--a picture book called CARIBOU ALPHABET, published by the Dog Ear Press, a Maine small press that later merged with Tilbury Press. Harriet Rohmer and I got to know each other not long after that. In the mid 1970s she had been a single mother living in San Francisco with a child enrolled in a Head Start program in the city's Mission District. There were children of many ethnic/national backgrounds in her son's small group, and HM recognized
a need in the lack of chiildren's books that reflected their backgrounds in some positive way. She got grant money together and eventually launched a small publishing company, Children's Book Press, which was dedicated to publishing bilingual picture books that presented culturally authentic stories and art for picture-book age children. The company is still going, more than 30 years later. And I think what Harriet and her colleagues did, and the success they had in placing their books in stores and libraries, etc., served as a model and catalyst for mainstream publishers to occasionally publish similar books.
Just Us was started by a couple living in New Jersey during the 1980s. Cheryl Willis Hudson had written and illustrated a picture book and couldn't find a publisher for it. Her husband Wade had a marketing background. They decided to take the leap and self-publish AFR0-BETS ABC BOOK. This was the beginning of a publishing company that grew and is still in business. Like Children's Book Press, the Hudsons found a niche in the market and were able to help fill it. Many small presses began as self-publishing ventures, and then morphed into something more broadly based. It was interesting to find that there were certain centers for small press publishing: the Bay Area and Toronto, among others.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman at education.wisc.edu>
Sent: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:57 am
Subject: [CCBC-Net] MINDERS and Alternative Presses
Leonard, As part of your discussion in MINDERS of the growing awareness of the need for books reflecting multicultural perspectives , I appreciated you discussing groundbreaking publishers such as Children's Book Press, Just Us Books, Writers and Readers' Black Butterfly imprint, and Lee & Low, among others. Since not everyone on CCBC-Net will have had a chance to read MINDERS yet, can you briefly mention who some of the "minders" were at these alternative presses? Do you have a sense of to what extent their work was on the radar of those in mainstream publishing? Megan -- Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 608/262-9503 schliesman at education.wisc.edu www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ _______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.e
ducation.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
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Received on Mon 28 Jul 2008 08:54:22 AM CDT
