Session Submission Summary

Best practices and innovations in children’s storybook publishing: public-private partnerships, quality translations, open licensing, and pooled procurement

Wed, April 17, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Pacific Concourse (Level -1), Pacific H

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Children’s storybooks are an essential part of their reading development. While most reading materials found in classrooms focus on instructional learning, storybooks provide the opportunity for a child to not only practice the skills developed in the classroom but also to grow a love and passion for reading. Exciting, culturally relevant, quality storybooks can expand a young reader’s worldview while growing their enjoyment of reading and contributing to their formation as a fluent and independent reader.

This panel will provide attendees with both an overview and specific case study examining the best practices and growing trends in children’s storybook publishing for low-income communities. The first presentation explores the increasing focus on national level engagement and public-private partnerships to impact a country’s publishing industry. The second presentation addresses how to fill the massive gap in quality local language storybooks in a time- and cost-efficient fashion. The third presentation discusses the growing trend for funders to require open licensing of all content developed in their projects, including storybooks. The final presentation explores ways to partner with local publishers and build capacity to establish a stronger, more sustainable publishing industry after a project ends – even in markets where the demand for local language books is low.

Each of these presentations will draw from Room to Read’s recent experience in a Results in Education for All Children (REACH), World Bank, and Global Book Alliance funded initiative in South Africa. REACH is a two-year project that began in 2017, whose mission is to address the supply and demand gaps in quality storybooks for emerging readers in African languages. Through this project, Room to Read has developed resource guides on quality standards, published 100 titles in African languages in partnership with local publishers, distributed more than 65,000 copies of the titles to government schools, and explored pooled procurement with publishers. The themes of these four presentations, while grounded in the REACH experience in South Africa, identify growing trends by comparing similarities between the REACH project and Room to Read’s experience from working in 16 countries across the world.

Peter Cooper, Senior Evaluation and Research Lead at School-to-School International, will serve as the discussant and chair. Peter will provide a brief introduction to the panel, and afterwards, provide summary remarks and then facilitate Q&A with panel attendees.

Sub Unit

Individual Presentations

Discussant