S&S’s Johnston Names Her New Imprint

By Diane Roback, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 8/14/2008

Former Harcourt editor-in-chief Allyn Johnston, who joined Simon & Schuster in March to start a new imprint, has given that imprint a name: Beach Lane Books. The imprint, like Johnston, is based in San Diego, and will debut in summer 2009.

Choosing the name was “difficult,” Johnston admits, because several potential names were unavailable, and because she didn’t want “something that sounded like a real estate office or a Hallmark card.” She wanted the name to reflect a sense of California, and it finally came to her once she rented office space. “It’s a block from the beach in La Jolla, on a small alley that looks like a lane,” she says. “The place gave us the name.”

Andrea Welch, who had worked with Johnston for eight years at Harcourt, has joined the imprint as an editor. Their aim is to produce 18 to 20 books a year, with a primary focus on “lyrical, engaging picture books for young children.” Though Johnston says they will also publish fiction for middle-graders and young adults, “that won’t be the driving force.”

The first list will include picture books by Mem Fox and Lois Ehlert; two titles in a debut picture-book series, called Brownie & Pearl, by Cynthia Rylant; and Jasper Dash and the Flame Pits of Delaware by M.T. Anderson, third in a middle-grade series that Johnston had published at Harcourt under the name M.T. Anderson’s Thrilling Tales. A logo for Beach Lane Books is being designed by Marla Frazee.

Making the transition has been an adjustment for Johnston, she readily admits. “I was at Harcourt for 22 years,” she says, “which is a really long time to be at one place. Leaving that was really difficult. But it’s great to be less administrative and have more time to work on the books.”