A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images. The images in picture books can be produced in a range of media, such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil. Picture books often serve as pedagogical resources, aiding with children's language development or understanding of the world.
Carole Boston Weatherford is an African-American author and critic, now living in North Carolina, United States. She is the winner of the 2022 Coretta Scott King Award for Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre. She writes children's literature and some historical books, as well as poetry and commentaries. Weatherford is best known for her books Juneteenth Jamboree, Freedom in Congo Square, and You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen. Notably, Weatherford has written literary criticisms of racist representations in children's entertainment. Today, she often writes with her son, Jeffery Boston Weatherford, who is an illustrator and poet.
Candlewick Press, established in 1992 and located in Somerville, Massachusetts, is part of the Walker Books group. The logo depicting a bear carrying a candle is based on Walker Books's original logo.
Hachette Books, formerly Hyperion Books, is a general-interest book imprint of the Perseus Books Group, which is a division of Hachette Book Group and ultimately a part of Lagardère Group. Established in 1990, Hachette publishes general-interest fiction and non-fiction books for adults. A former subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, it was originally named after Hyperion Avenue, the location of Walt Disney Studios prior to 1939. Hachette took over a 1,000 book backlist when Hyperion was purchased from Disney in 2013 with 250 bestselling novels, including Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
Suzy Lee is a Korean picture-book illustrator and author. She is critically acclaimed as an artist who explores the pleasures and tensions that lie between reality and fantasy. She is also known for her remarkable achievements in the field of wordless picture books, or silent books. She gained global attention for her three works – Mirror (2003), Wave (2008), and Shadow (2010), known collectively as "The Border Trilogy" – using the center binding of the pages of a book as a means to create a narrative crossing the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Wave and Shadow were respectively named by The New York Times as Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2008 and 2010. Wave was also awarded the gold medal for Original Art by the Society of Illustrators in 2008. In 2016, Suzy Lee was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, regarded as the Nobel Prize for children's literature, an award which she received in 2022. Lee has received a number of other prestigious awards from around the world including the FNLIJ Award Luís Jardim for the Best Book without Text in 2008 and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature in 2013.
The Mildred L. Batchelder Award, or Batchelder Award, is an American Library Association literary award that annually recognizes the publisher of the year's "most outstanding" children's book translated into English and published in the U.S.
Tamarind Books was a small independent British publisher specialising in picture books, fiction and non-fiction featuring black and Asian children and children with disabilities. It was founded by Verna Wilkins in 1987 with the mission of redressing the balance of diversity in children’s publishing, and in 2007 became an imprint of Random House Children’s Books UK.
Cinco Puntos Press is an imprint of publishing company Lee & Low Books. It is a general trade publisher that has received attention for its bilingual children's books and fiction and non-fiction focusing on the Mexico–United States border region. It was founded by novelist Lee Merrill Byrd and poet Bobby Byrd in 1985 and sold to Lee & Low in June 2021. It is known for its multi-cultural and political focus for both children and adults.
The Quarto Group is a global illustrated book publishing group founded in 1976. It is domiciled in the United States and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Amazon Publishing is Amazon's book publishing unit launched in 2009. It is composed of 15 imprints including AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47North, and TOPPLE Books.
Verna Allette Wilkins FRSL is a Grenada-born publisher and author, now resident in London. In 1987 she founded the children's books imprint Tamarind Books, "producing quality inclusive literature that featured Black, Asian and minority ethnic children and children with disabilities" out of her concern about the effect on children who did not see themselves represented in books. Tamarind was acquired 20 years later by the Random House Group and became part of Random House Children's Books. Wilkins is also the author of more than 40 picture books and biographies for young people.
Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House.
Don Tate is an American author and illustrator of books for children. He is also an activist promoting racial and cultural inclusiveness in children's literature. He notes that as a child he had to read the encyclopedia to discover a multicultural world; based on the children's books of his day he "thought the world was white". He co-founded the young African American blog The Brown Bookshelf and helps run the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign to improve diversity of material in children's books.
Tu Books is a young adult and middle grade publishing imprint of Lee & Low Books. The company was founded by Stacy Whitman in 2009 as Tu Publishing before being acquired by Lee & Low in 2010. It focuses on publishing works featuring diverse characters and works written by diverse writers. Since 2012, it has administered the New Visions Award to recognize new talent in the field.
Atria Publishing Group is a general interest publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster. The publishing group launched as Atria Books in 2002. The Atria Publishing Group was later created internally at Simon & Schuster to house a number of imprints including Atria Books, Atria Trade Paperbacks, Atrai Books Espanol, Atria Unbound, Washington Square Press, Emily Bestler Books, Atria/Beyond Words, Cash Money Content, Howard Books, Marble Arch Press, Strebor Books, 37 Ink, Keywords Press and Enliven Books. Atria is also known for creating innovative imprints and co-publishing deals with African-American writers as well as known for experimenting with digital or non-traditional print formats and authors.
We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is a nonprofit organization created to promote diversity of multiple forms in children's literature and publishing, which grew out of the Twitter hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks in 2014. The organization's programming includes funding grants and internships for diverse authors and people interested in publishing, a mentorship program, providing lists of book recommendations for librarians, teachers, and parents on finding books with characters from marginalized backgrounds, and publishing an anthology of short stories featuring multiple authors from diverse backgrounds.
Derrick Barnes is an American author. He is known for writing several popular series of children's books and is a former staff writer for Hallmark greeting cards. In 2018 Barnes received several awards that include the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award for his 2017 book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut.
Bird, written by Zetta Elliott and illustrated by Shadra Strickland, is a picture book written in 2008. It won the New Voices Award Honor from its publishing company Lee & Low Books Incorporation.
This is a timeline of African American Children's literature milestones in the United States from 1600 – present. The timeline also includes selected events in Black history and children's book publishing broadly.
Zetta Elliott is a Canadian-American poet, playwright, and author. Her first picture book Bird, won many awards. She has also been recognized for other contributions to children's literature, as well as for her essays, plays, and young adult novels.
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