Publishers Weekly has highlighted Annick Press, Groundwood Books, and Owlkids Books in an article about Canadian children’s publishers extending their reach into television and movie adaptations in both Canada and the US!
“Annick Press is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Paper Bag Princess—which has sold 12 million copies over the life of the book in various formats—is the publisher’s all-time bestselling title and continues ‘to pay the bills,’ says Rick Wilks, director of Annick. ‘So many people tell me that it was their favorite book as a child and now they are buying it again for their own children,’ Wilks says. ‘Even better, this year there has been renewed interested in turning it into an animated film or television series.’ More good news for Annick came earlier this year when it announced that it partnered with Pearson Canada to sell the publisher’s trade books in the education market.
Publishing for the ‘diversity market’ is increasingly important, Wilks says, with an emphasis on positive stories featuring indigenous characters. ‘We want to say, ‘Look around, there are amazing things happening,’’ Wilks says. ‘While it is always important to acknowledge the difficulty of history and of the residential schools and the hardship, it is also important to point out that there is kind of a creative renaissance happening. We want to look at the community’s struggles, but also its achievements, in an effort to change the conversation here.’
Sheila Barry, publisher of Groundwood Books, is also proud of her house’s breadth of diversity titles, which have also been marketed in a special catalogue called ‘Windows and Mirrors. ‘It’s a great tool for booksellers, libraries, and schools who want to add more diversity to what they can offer to customers,’ she says. ‘We have always had the books, and now—maybe it’s the election year—buyers, in the U.S. in particular, seem more courageous in 
what they are going to put in their general trade bookstore,’ she adds. For the fall, Groundwood has a book titled A Boy Named Queen, which is about the fact that children don’t need to be cognizant of gender identity.’This season and last season, more than half our books have been written or illustrated by nonwhite people,’ Barry says. ‘Diversity for us is like breathing.’
In other good news for Groundwood, The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis— Groundwood’s bestselling book of all time, with four million copies sold in 30 languages—is being turned into an animated film by Cartoon Saloon of Ireland and will be released in 2017.
Meanwhile, Owlkids is looking at offering titles for the young adult market that are ‘issue oriented but don’t always hit you over the head,’ says Karen Boersma. One example of these is The Art of the Possible, which as aimed at 10–14-year-olds and discusses politics in a positive light, and has sold 5,000 copies. Another is Why Do 
We Fight? by Niki Walker, which came with the subhead Conflict, War and Peace.
Boersma says that the YA nonfiction titles are most likely to sell internationally and get picked up for rights deals. ‘The Asian markets in particular are interested in these.'”
