Harvest House Publishers is creating a new imprint, Harvest Kids, which will launch this fall and be led by executive v-p and publisher Barb Sherrill. The imprint will highlight Bibles, picture books, devotionals, and other faith-based products and resources for kids through age 12.
“We organically and quietly built a successful children’s book line, and we want to house what we’ve done with a new energy and focus,” Sherrill told PW. “By creating the imprint, the company says that children’s books are important, and we can break open new products with a focus on children and families.”Harvest House, which publishes 20-25 children’s books a year, hopes that providing a separate group of books from the general line will better connect retailers to the products. Title output, however, will remain the same for the imprint. “We aren’t going to publish six times as many books,” said Sherrill. “It’s not a change in quantity but a change in quality.”
The new imprint arrives amid growth in religion publishing for children—Tyndale House recently announced plans to expand its children’s line, and Westminster John Knox is upping its children’s title output. Sherrill traced the growth back to a new generation of parents.
“Millennials are starting to raise their children and finding there are not enough books that reflect their ideals,” said Sherrill. “Our books will honor women of the Bible, reach multi-generational families, and introduce new and different people to the market.”
Harvest Kids will launch with A Kid’s Guide to the Names of God by pastor Tony Evans, intended for readers aged 9-12, as well as a not yet titled book by God’s Wisdom for Little Boys and God’s Wisdom for Little Girls authors Jim and Elizabeth George. Other titles slated to appear under Harvest Kids in the fall will include the first book in the new Courageous Girls series, A Brave Big Sister by Rachel Spier Weaver and Anna Haggard, which follows the life of Miriam, and a bilingual edition of Stormie Omartian’s What Happens When I Talk to God.
