An Irish prime minister (it was Garrett Fitzgerald) was famously credited with the immortal line, “Well, I can see that it works in practice, but will it work in theory?” Ireland’s Little Island is a bit like that. A tiny children’s publishing company that specializes in translated titles and debut authors should definitely not work in theory. In practice, however, Little Island is still afloat after nearly 10 years in business.

Like most publishers, we are creative in our thinking and passionate about our vision, and because we are small, we have more scope to be creative and to take risks on books that we love. And we are daring: we make publishing decisions that larger and more commercially oriented companies can’t or won’t—because they generally don’t like publishing books in translation. We don’t do this because we think it’s a great commercial proposition. We do it because we have always worked on the principle that our first commitment is to our readers, our books, and their authors. We have always put literary and aesthetic values, along with our political, cultural, and social vision, at the heart of our business, way ahead of that very wavy-looking thing we have been told is called the bottom line.

The impetus for Little Island was own interest in translation. I went to see Edwin Higel of New Island Books in Dublin. He sensibly pointed out that we couldn’t publish only translations—that we needed to have a children’s list in general, and that we could do translations as part of that. I went into that meeting with Edwin to discuss translation and came out as commissioning editor of a new children’s list called Little Island Books. (Edwin invented the name.) Serendipity rules!

Before long, for purely practical reasons, Little Island became (amicably) independent of New Island, set up as a completely separate children’s publishing house—but we kept our name, because we love it.

We publish between seven and 10 books a year, and this year three of those are translations: a novel from Germany (with gorgeous illustrations by David Roberts); a stunning picture book, also from Germany (about a tractor—there’s universal appeal!); and a book of rhymes for very young children about illness and recovery, from Latvia. In the past we have published books translated from Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, French, and Swedish. And Irish.

We do, of course, find translated books harder to sell. Thing is, every culture is constantly telling itself a narrative about itself, and what’s going on in other, non-English-speaking countries simply doesn’t fit into that rolling cultural narrative. So it’s harder to interest readers in translated titles. But for too long Ireland was an inward-looking nation. That’s no longer the case. We are pleased and proud to be part of that cultural shift, and we are committed to providing international books for our readers—so we just do it. We have to think creatively about it. We have to source titles that have some kind of unusual appeal in order to overcome the resistance to translation. That’s a challenge, of course, but it is also a pleasure.

There are advantages too. For years, we felt we could not afford to publish picture books. Then we found that copublishing or buying rights put the publishing of picture books within our reach. That is the kind of discovery you can only make if you do the countercultural thing in the first place and take the risk of publishing in translation.

As well as translations, we also specialize in debut novels by Irish writers. This year, for example, we are bringing out a riot of a mock detective story by a first-time Irish writer. (The turkey does it—not the crime, the investigating.) Like translations, debuts are a risk. But this year’s new novelist is next year’s award-winning author with an even better book to offer us. Star authors start out as debut novelists. For instance, our bestselling Deirdre Sullivan (author of Tangleweed and Brine), whose reputation has gone stratospheric, appeared as a new writer on Little Island’s first list.

So we seem to be doing something right, some of the time. That’s all in practice, of course. In theory it really shouldn’t work.

Siobhán Parkinson is an author and the publisher of Little Island.