#SCBWISummerSpec Editors Panel: Neal Porter

Neal Porter, founder and publisher of Neal Porter Books, with Yuyi Morales, author/illustrator of the award-winning picture book DREAMERS

Neal Porter is VP and publisher of Neal Porter Books, an imprint at Holiday House, and is also the founder of Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan. His books have won a plethora of awards, including the Caldecott Medal, four Caldecott Honors, Geisel Honors, Sibert Honors, the Coretta Scott King Award and Honor for illustration, Pura Belpré Awards, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and in 2015 he himself was awarded an Eric Carle Honor in the category of Mentor.

I had the pleasure of meeting and having more than one conversation with Neal at an SCBWI conference at Asilomar a few years ago, and I made a point of introducing myself and expressing my respect because ye gods, the man is having a CAREER, you know what I’m saying? He’s been in the children’s publishing industry for 43 years, with positions at too many publishing houses to even try to list, and works with some of the most heralded authors and illustrators in the field, including my personal choice for The Best Picture Book Author/Illustrator On the Planet Earth Right Now, Yuyi Morales.

The man himself, Neal Porter.

Neal exclusively publishes picture books - 24 picture books spread across 3 seasons per year, to be exact - and some of the books he’s especially proud of are DREAMERS by Yuyi Morales, NINE MONTHS by Miranda Paul and Jason Chin, HEY WATER! by Antoinette Portis, and A PLACE TO LAND by Barry Wittenstein. In fact, he met Miranda, Antoinette, and Barry at SCBWI events, so, you know, SCBWI has served up a few bottles of that particular flavor of lightning.

Neal’s also done the publishing equivalent of finding a movie star working at the local soda fountain - in his case, the soda fountain being an indie bookstore, and the movie star being future Caldecott medalist Erin Stead - but he mostly hears about new talent from agents. He entertainingly describes the three-person staff of Neal Porter as a “vast empire,” but one which doesn’t accept unsolicited material because, you know, three people. Dude is good with irony.

He was not shy about acknowledging the changes and challenges forced upon the publishing industry by the Covid-19 pandemic. He misses the easy spontaneity of strolling down the hall to chat with colleagues, which is a more formal and ritualized process via Zoom. His list is full through 2022, and looking to 2023 means looking toward a reality we can’t yet predict the shape of. At the end of the day the publishing industry is still a personal, intuitive, and selfish (in the sense of only publishing books he truly loves) one for him, but he second guesses his choices more these days because of pandemic-induced uncertainty.

Neal acknowledges that as a 66 year old white guy, he carries an immense amount of privilege that he sometimes struggles to check at the door, but he finds much inspiration and learning from the examples set by his younger colleagues, and is eager to keep finding new work that prioritizes underrepresented voices, confronts racism, and empowers individuals and communities to rise up. Publishing has proven infinitely adaptable, and he believes a good book will always find its audience, no matter the circumstances.

Lin Oliver, Neal Porter, Arthur Levine, Namrata Tripathi, Julia Strauss-Gabel, Stacey Barney, Jill Santopolo, and Brian Truitt during the #SCBWISummerSpec editor panel.

Happy Hour Hangouts

A new opportunity at the SCBWI Summer Conference, these informal conversations with faculty members including agents and artist reps (Ginger Clark, Erica Rand Silverman, Tina Wexler, Kirsten Hall and Brooks Sherman) and editors and publishers (Krista Marino, Neal Porter, Sara Sargent, Melissa Manlove, Stacey Barney, Kat Brzozowski, and Reka Simonsen) are a big hit!

Attendees with agent Ginger Clark

Attendees with Publisher Neal Porter

Editor Panel – Neal Porter and Matt Ringler

Neal with Jessixa Bagley at her book launch
(photo stolen from Jessixa's Facebook)

Neal Porter of Neal Porter Books (an imprint of Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan) shares his three favorites:

GIANT SQUID by Candace Fleming and illustrated by Eric Rohmann (out September 2016)

SCHOOL'S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL by Adam Rex and illustrated by Christian Robinson.

IDEAS ARE ALL AROUND by Philip Stead

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Matt with a band, not his boy band. Photo stolen from Matt's Twitter feed.

Matt Ringler of Scholastic has these three favorite books:

KILL THE BOY BAND by Goldy Moldavsky

THE HERO TWO DOORS DOWN by Sharon Robinson

and THE PUPPY PLACE series by Ellen Miles

The Editors' Panel Begins!

Moderated by Emma Dryden (standing, far left), the panel shares three books that they acquired (and why):

Seated, from Left to Right:

Stacey Barney, Senior Editor (G.P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin)

Kat Brzozowski, Associate Editor (St. Martin's)

Alvina Ling, V.P. and Editor in Chief (Little, Brown)

Melissa Manlove, Editor (Chronicle)

Neal Porter, Publisher (Neal Porter Books)

Matt Ringler, Senior Editor (Scholastic)

Sara Sargent, Executive Edtior (Harper Collins)

Reka Simonsen, Executive Editor (Atheneum)

Kate Sullivan, Senior Editor (Delacorte)

Neal Porter: On Picture Books

Neal Porter is the publisher of the Neal Porter Books imprint of Roaring Brook Press. He has been in the book publishing business for decades. His work has spanned both the editorial process and the marketing departments of the industry. Neal has worked with a number of Caldecott Medal–honored illustrators, including Eric Rohmann, Ted Lewin, Laura Vaccaro Seeger, and the 2011 Caldecott Medal winner, Erin Stead, in her book A Sick Day for Amos McGee. He received an Eric Carle Honor in the category of Mentor in 2015.

Neal starts off his breakout session by saying that he's actually re-named his speech, "Three Reasons I Love SCBWI"

And tells us in some depth about publishing "The Iridescence of Birds," a picture book about Henri Matisse, written by Patricia MacLachlan and illustrated by Hadley Hooper. (The SCBWI connection? He and Patricia we speaking about it at a SCBWI Summer Conference and when he asked her what she was working on, she said 'I just wrote a picture book no one will ever publish.) Well, Neal did!

He also describes the story behind his publishing Antoinette Portis' "Best Frints in the Whole Universe."

Antoinette is actually in the audience, and Neal calls her up to to do a short interview within the session, which is proceeded by Antoinette reading it out loud to us…  They discuss some of the editing process for the book - about the emotional exchange between the characters and some of the story beats.

Neal finishes his presentation about books he discovered at SCBWI and then published with Miranda Paul's "Water is Water" (he met Miranda at a 2012 SCBWI conference critique.)

Miranda is also in the audience, and Neal calls her up as well! They discuss the process and evolution of the rhyming nonfiction picture book. Neal shares Miranda's cover letter that she submitted with the manuscript, and he tells us his ultimate litmus test, the question he asks himself all the time:

"Do I have to publish this book?"

In all three of these cases, the answer was YES.