It's Fast Forward for Play Bac
by Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 8/9/2007
Originally based in France, Play Bac Publishing—the publishers of My Daily, a French daily newspaper for kids, and the originator of the enormously successful Brainquest series—has recently launched a U.S. publishing operation. Located in lower Manhattan, Play Bac entered the American market last month with three new series: Vocabulary Power, Homework Helpster and Timeline. A fourth series, Eye-Like, concept books for preschoolers, will debut in September. The books are distributed to the trade by Black Dog & Leventhal.
Gaëtan Burrus, publisher and CEO of Play Bac Publishing, who moved with his family from France to New York last year, says that the company plans to make its niche in the U.S. market with curriculum-based series with creative designs. “We are creating formats that are very appealing to kids, teachers and parents,” he explains. “We want to make learning a bit easier. We take our motto—“More. Brain. Power.”—very seriously. We deliver an innovative way to look at the world and to learn.” The Play Bac series are written by freelance authors, with teacher input, and the three launch series are designed by the Bill Smith Studio.
After arriving on these shores, Play Bac held focus groups with teachers, parents and children and conducted Internet surveys to access each group’s needs. The publisher’s findings led to the creation of Vocabulary Power and Homework Helpster, both of which feature a spiral-bound, stand-up easel format and card-like pages. “From our research, we learned that when kids begin reading, they frequently don’t understand the meaning of words they encounter,” Burrus says. “That is why we created Vocabulary Power, presenting one word on each page. In two minutes, children can learn a word in a way that they will remember.” Each of the volumes in the Vocabulary Power series, which includes books targeted at students in kindergarten through third grade, presents 200 humorously illustrated vocabulary words, which were selected by language specialists to help youngsters build reading skills.
Aimed at third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, the installments of the Homework Helpster series contain 200 flip cards, each summarizing a basic concept in the areas of math, language arts, science and social studies. “Our focus groups taught us that American kids are getting more and more homework these days and it has become more and more of a nightmare for everyone,” Burrus explains. “Parents often don’t have the time to help with homework and kids are lost. With this series, children get maximum information on a single subject at a glance.”
Created for youngsters in grade five and up, the Timeline series quite literally lets history unfold. These accordion-style volumes, the first of which are American Revolution, Civil War, Presidents, Inventors and Explorers, fold out to present illustrated historical facts. “We discovered through our research that it is very difficult for youngsters to remember sequences of events and that they learn much more easily when the information is presented visually,” says Burrus. “A visually-oriented design is something that is very important to Play Bac.”
The publisher has printed 25,000 copies of each title in the three launch series, which he anticipates will sell well in the trade as well as institutional markets. “It’s still very early,” Burrus says, “but we have already had positive feedback from stores as well as teachers and librarians. We are confident that we are bringing something very fresh to the U.S. marketplace.”
