Publisher Christy Ottaviano is taking her eponymous imprint from Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, as of November 30. The imprint’s first list at LBYR will debut in 2022.
Ottaviano, who will take on the title of v-p and publisher, will work alongside editor Jessica Anderson, currently associate editor at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. The team will publish roughly 30 titles per year, with books ranging from literary and commercial fiction and nonfiction for preschool through teen readers.
Over the course of her 28 years at Macmillan’s Henry Holt imprint, where she began her career and launched her own imprint in 2008, she has published such noteworthy books as National Book Award winner When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt; Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award winner The Way a Door Closes by Hope Anita Smith; Laurie Keller’s Adventures of Arnie the Doughnut series; and the acclaimed Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 11 by Helaine Becker, illustrated by Dow Phumiruk. She has also published works by Julia Alvarez, Elise Broach, Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, April Henry, Tanya Lee Stone, Janet Tashjian, and more.
Ottaviano said in a statement, “I am absolutely thrilled for the opportunity to grow my imprint at Little, Brown, working with Megan Tingley and her top-drawer team. I have long admired Megan’s sharp commercial sensibility and her creative, innovative book making both as an editor and a publisher, and feel Little, Brown is the perfect home to take my imprint to the next level. This next chapter promises to be bigger and better for all—we can’t wait.”
