What are Publishers Looking For?
The demand for multicultural children’s literature is high in response to a dearth of good material. Publishers are especially interested in contemporary stories that explore issues that today’s diverse population of children are encountering. However, as more writers jump on the multicultural bandwagon, some niches are getting filled faster than others. In an interview in 2004 [6], publishers contended that while books about Asian cultures were on the rise, they weren’t seeing a corresponding growth in books about Hispanic cultures, and that Latinos were “almost totally unrepresented.” Likewise, the interest in world folktales has decreased since the initial “boom,” although it is still a rich field to mine. Magazine markets remain receptive to them, in some cases keenly enthusiastic (e.g. the Cricket Magazine Group), and while some multicultural children’s book publishers (e.g. Lee & Low Books) expressly state in their guidelines that they are not seeking folktales, others (e.g. All
