(Updated December 9, 2019)
(illustration: James Ransome)
As a child, books were a form of travel for Nancy Paulsen 鈥�78鈦犫仩鈦犫赌拟补诲别濒颈苍别 transported her to Paris. No matter where books took her, though, the characters in them always looked a lot like her: a white girl. So when Paulsen landed in the editorial department at the Penguin publishing house after graduating from BC, she started building relationships with authors who had fresh perspectives.
More than two decades later, she鈥檚 still at Penguin鈥攖hough as president of the Nancy Paulsen Books imprint鈥攁nd she鈥檚 still publishing the kinds of authors and books she longed for as a child. 鈥淎s kids today grow up, they can鈥檛 stay sheltered and insulated,鈥� Paulsen said. 鈥淓mpathy comes with being open-minded and valuing lives and experiences that are different.鈥�
Nancy Paulsen Books publishes fifteen children鈥檚 titles a year, books like Aisha Saeed鈥檚 Amal Unbound, which explores the life of a Pakistani girl forced into indentured servitude. Saeed told me that Paulsen has been 鈥渁 champion of diverse voices and stories since the beginning.鈥�
Other notable Paulsen titles include Jacqueline Woodson鈥檚 acclaimed Brown Girl Dreaming, a lyrical novel that plunges readers into the civil rights movement in the South Carolina of the 1960s, and Lynda Mullaly Hunt鈥檚 bestseller Fish in a Tree, about a girl with dyslexia.
鈥淚 try to have most of my books show kids that life is hard and painful and complicated and confusing,鈥� Paulsen said, 鈥渂ut there is hope.鈥�