A Persistent Son Helps Create Imprint
This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on May 3, 2007 Sign up now!
by Joy Bean, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 5/3/2007
Smith & Kraus Publishers, long known for its line of theater books, is expanding its reach this fall with a middle-grade fiction imprint called Smith & Sons. While Smith & Kraus has never published a fiction title before, Marisa Kraus, owner and publisher of the company along with her husband Eric, says it was her son who made her do it. "Our son Peter is incredibly persistent and we started the imprint so he wouldn't bug us anymore," she says.
What Peter was bugging his parents about is a book called Middleworld, the first book in The Jaguar Stones trilogy by John and Pamela Voelkel. Peter got his hands on a manuscript of the book after the Voelkels moved to New Hampshire near Kraus and her husband. "They had just sold their advertising agency in Britain and wanted to live in New England," says Kraus. "They knew we were publishers, so they asked us if we would read the story they wrote."
Kraus brought the Middleworld manuscript home and left it on a coffee table. "Peter, who was 14 at the time, picked it up. He stayed up half the night to read it." Because Peter is particular about what he reads, Kraus paid special attention when he declared the book the next Harry Potter. "I thought those were cursed words," Kraus says, "because I know lightning doesn't strike twice, but his recommendation made us start talking to the authors."
Authors John and Pamela Voelkel.
Middleworld, and The Jaguar Stones trilogy as a whole, is an adventure story about a 14-year-old boy named Max, whose summer is turned upside down when his parents head to Central America to work at an archeologist dig at a Mayan temple. Max is supposed to go to summer camp, but before he leaves, he gets a strange phone call telling him to head to the temple right away, to save his parents.
The Voelkels will be doing some promotion for the book, including having a Maya King costume created, which one of the authors can wear during programs on the culture.
Middleworld is due in October, with the subsequent books in the series scheduled for release in 2008 and 2009. Kraus says that they aren't seeking out any other fiction titles to publish, but "if we get other submissions in this age range, we'll see what happens."
