Like attendees at this year’s regional bookseller shows, Greater Boston children’s book publishers and booksellers are focused on building community. Last month, community building inspired Nosy Crow and Charlesbridge Publishing’s inaugural Kid Lit Night.

No doubt Covid has played a role in the need to connect, as have economic uncertainty, tariffs, and book banning. But the biggest change may have been the loss of two of the area’s largest children’s publishers, who played a key role in bringing together those in the field: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers relocated to New York City in 2001, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt followed in 2021. So enter Kid Lit Night, a children’s community first for bringing together publishers, booksellers, and librarians.

Held at Boston’s Night Shift Brewery, the event drew approximately 50 attendees. Kid lit folks may have been drawn by book-related crafts, food and beer, and galley giveaways, but they stayed for conversation and as the invitations promised, “good old community-building.”

As for why the organizers chose not to align the event with a regional or national conference, Avery Cook, associate marketing manager at Nosy Crow and a 2024 PW Star Watch honoree, said, “I think we have a great bookish community in our backyard that we don’t have to burn a lot of fossil fuel to fly to.” She pointed to places like 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing, tutoring, and publishing organization; the Boston Public Library; and the area’s strong mix of authors and illustrators, independent booksellers, and children’s houses, ranging around greater Boston from Barefoot Books in Concord to the Quarto Group in Beverly on the North Shore.

“I think that community is good, especially right now,” Cook added, “[when] kids’ books are being attacked from a lot of different directions. So if we can kind of be together, community is a valuable tool of resistance.”

Kid Lit Night’s roots date back to a 2024 meeting of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries in Springfield, Mass., where Rhode Island-based Gelsey Phaneuf, editorial manager and associate publicist at NorthSouth Books, first raised the idea of a New England publisher joint preview for spring 2025 titles to colleagues at Barefoot Books, Charlesbridge, and Nosy Crow. Although that didn’t work out, it’s possible that Barefoot, NorthSouth and/or another area publisher will join with Charlesbridge and Nosy Crow for a second Kid Lit Night as early as next spring.

“The more the merrier,” said Rachel Doody, digital marketing manager at Charlesbridge. “It’s such a great opportunity to come together in support of the kid lit community. One of the best parts of this event was seeing how energized people were to connect across different parts of the book community.”

While Cook is looking forward to making it a semiannual event, Donna Spurlock, director of marketing at Charlesbridge, would prefer to make it annual. She sees Kid Lit Night as a “great opportunity” for area presses to come together and preview lists with local booksellers and librarians. Given the proximity of so many kids’ book publishers, Spurlock added, “Getting together to share books, the love of books, and exchange ideas about how to ensure that books get into kids’ hands and encourage their love of reading, it’s a no brainer.”

Making Other Connections

While Charlesbridge and Nosy Crow are looking at next steps for Kid Lit Night, other Greater Boston book colleagues are finding more ways to connect. Sanj Kharbanda, associate publisher of Beacon Press in Boston, is in the midst of planning an as-yet-unnamed event for both children’s and adult publishers, booksellers, and librarians. It will take place in February or March at Beacon’s offices in the Fort Point neighborhood. “For me, one of the greatest joys of working in the book world is the people,” he said. “There’s something genuinely special about this community, and selfishly, I want to meet as many of these amazing individuals as I can. But beyond that, I believe deeply in the power of cross-industry collaboration.”

Beacon also assisted JustBook-ish in Dorchester, Mass., with “The Shelf Life Party,” which took place one week before Kid Lit Night and brought together both children’s and adult booksellers and publishers at the bookstore. And like Kid Lit Night, it, too, could become an annual event. Bing Broderick, who founded the bookstore with Boston poet Porsha Olayiwola last November, saw the party as a way to say thank-you to the bookstores that included JustBook-ish in an Independent Bookstore Day passport. “We were appreciative of all the business and support we got. We’re at a new era of bookselling,” Broderick said.

And this past summer, Ashley Burns, associate production editor at Sourcebooks, who works in Boston, began organizing informal bar/pub gatherings via LinkedIn for other young people in publishing, and those who want to get into the book business. The group, which meets monthly, has become known as “Pubs in Pubs.” “Right now, it’s very casual,” she said. “I’m hoping to grow it into something more established.”