#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.

Keynote: Yuyi Morales

Yuyi Morales

Yuyi Morales was born in Xalapa, Mexico, where she currently resides.

A professional storyteller, dancer, choreographer, puppeteer, and artist, she has won the prestigious Pura Belpré Award for Illustration five times, for Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book (2003), Los Gatos Black on Halloween (2006), Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book (2008), Niño Wrestles the World (2013), and Viva Frida (2014), also a Caldecott Honor Book.

Her latest book, Dreamers, won this year’s Pura Belpré Award and was also named a New York Times Best-Illustrated Book.

Newbery Medalist Meg Medina introduced Yuyi, saying, "What she has been, most of all, is vibrant and living proof that there is a way for us to dream."

Yuyi started with an important question: Why do we make children's books?

She believes "there is an inner purpose—it's something that sounds like love."

And, she said, love is how we recognize ourselves in others. It's how we care. It's how we say that children are important to us, and that there is something in the world we can put there with love.

We can learn how to make children's books through the SCBWI. But how do we learn to love?

"We usually learn how to love when we get together. We learn how to love when we share what we know. No one knows everything, and no one knows nothing."

She offered her experience, hoping we can make a connection and learn from each other.

When Yuyi was a child, she loved to draw, and she learned how to copy. And she'd often go into her bedroom to draw because it felt like such an intimate thing. She learned how to draw herself by looking in the mirror so much that she can draw her eyes and nose without even looking.

She didn't have children's literature when she was a child. She was born in Mexico and grew up there. They didn't have children's books, but they did have comic books and graphic novels. She studied those and learned what she liked. When she was 12, she discovered Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and then she became a teenager and stopped drawing and didn't think about it again until she became an adult and had a son.

She started drawing her son, again and again. And when he was two months old, her family came to the United States. It wasn't something she'd planned to do, but her future husband was a U.S. citizen. Then, because of the complexities of immigration, she couldn't go back and she lost her support system.

Then her mother in law took her to a public library, and that changed her life forever. "In the public library, I fell in love with books. In picture books I finally found something I understood and something that understood me."

As she learned how to do art, her dining room table served as her schooIn 2000, she won the SCBWI's Don Freeman grant. That submission became a book called Just a Minute.

She told us the origin stories of more of her books, which are answers to questions and struggles and fears. "Once I started making stories about things I was scared of, maybe they become my friends."

She is drawn to the craziest ideas she can imagine—and that's how she decides. If it's crazy, then it's for her. Five years ago, Yuyi returned to Mexico. She eventually had a place she could create again.

After the 2016 presidential election, she struggled to create. But then decided maybe it was time for immigrants to tell their stories. "It is time for everybody to say who we are. Not who others think we are."

And that's how Dreamers came about. She wanted to tell her story, about a woman who came from Mexico to the United States. Her story was also her baby son's story. She wondered at first who would be interested in the story. Initially, when people asked her story, she said she came with nothing. But she started rethinking that. And she realized she didn't come with nothing: She came with her stories, her hopes, her talent, her passion, her hands.

"I decided for this book, I was going to tell that truth."

(Written by Martha Brockenbrough for Mike Jung)