After a nearly 50-year career in publishing with accolades that include two Caldecott Medals, four Caldecott Honors, two Geisel Honors, three Pura Belpré Awards, and Ezra Jack Keats and Coretta Scott King Award winners, Neal Porter has announced his retirement from his eponymous imprint at Holiday House at the end of November. In January, Porter stepped away from his full-time role there to become publisher emeritus, handing the reins to Taylor Norman, who was appointed editorial director. Porter shared thoughts and reflections on his long and distinguished career.
He said he “fell into” publishing in 1977 when after studying theater history and dramatic literature at NYU (with the intention of becoming a theater critic), a friend offered him a job in the textbook division at St. Martin’s Press. “It took me about a week to realize I didn’t want to be in textbooks,” he said. Luckily, there were other avenues to explore in publishing, and he went on to work in marketing at Avon Books, FSG, Atheneum, and Scribners, before becoming editorial director of Aladdin in 1985, and joint managing director of Walker Books in the U.K. in 1987. He was later appointed publisher of Macmillan Children’s Books and held executive positions at Orchard Books and DK. In 2001, he helped found Roaring Brook Press, where he also launched Neal Porter Books, which was sold along with Roaring Brook to Macmillan in 2004. He moved his imprint to Holiday House in 2017.
Reflecting on his publishing career, Porter said much has changed over the years. “In the early days, children’s books were this quiet backwater that no one paid much attention to. We functioned in a kind of benign neglect. But at the same time publishers realized children’s books were a stable and predictable business based primarily on backlist sales. That shifted as the retail market for kids’ books grew and grew. Suddenly, we became an object of focus and a profit center in a way that we hadn’t been before. In many houses, the process of acquiring a book has become more cumbersome.”
Despite this change, Porter’s reputation for finding and publishing beautiful and meaningful books essentially hasn’t changed. “So much of what I do is intuitive,” he said, describing what he calls his litmus test: asking himself “Do I have to publish this book?” While books “never come to you fully formed and perfect,” he added, he might fall in love with the text and then imagine how it will work visually. “Every book is different. It’s a new adventure.”
Among the many noteworthy books of his career, Yuyi Morales’s Dreamers stands out as being an example of the “magic” that can take place when publishing children’s books. The first book to be published by Neal Porter Books after the imprint moved to Holiday House, Dreamers “arrived the day I started,” he recalled: September 11, 2017. “We worked at breakneck speed,” he said. “For this book, Yuyi developed an entirely new style, scanning textures and artifacts into the artwork that were breathtaking to behold. In a kind of publishing miracle, we were able to publish the book in both English and Spanish one year later. It remains one of the most successful books I’ve been privileged to publish.” Dreamers (2018) became a New York Times and Indie bestseller and won a Pura Belpré Illustrator Award and a Tomás Rivera Book Award.
As another example of fortuitous publishing, he cited Caldecott Medal-winning Watercress by Andrea Wang, illustrated by Jason Chin. “I got the manuscript and thought, I have to publish this,” he said. “Jason is primarily known for nonfiction. I thought it would be really interesting for him to try a fictional story. The results were magical.”
While publishers generally work separately with illustrators and authors, he added, “in this case, it just felt right for it to be a three-way collaboration because Andrea’s story was rooted in her own story. It was wonderful to see the book evolve with all participants active.” Collaborating with author and illustrator in this way has been one of the highlights of his career, he said, offering as example I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith, and his work with Philip and Erin Stead on A Sick Day for Amos McGee, for which Erin won the Caldecott Medal in 2011.
Another case of “I have to publish this” is The Iridescence of Birds: A Book About Henri Matisse by Patricia MacLachlan. While Porter and MacLachlan were chatting at an event, the author mentioned that she was working on a book that “no one would publish,” Porter said. After reading it, he knew that he was the one who would, and that Hadley Hooper was the right illustrator for the project.
A New Chapter
As rewarding as his career has been, Porter acknowledges that children’s publishing has become increasingly challenging. “I used to believe a really good book would find its audience, but it’s tough these days,” he said. “It’s a very noisy environment in which to publish books.” At the same time, he added, “Over the last 48 years I’ve seen ebbs and flows. Everything is cyclical. I’ve been through so many moments when the value of the printed book has been questioned. I have every confidence that we will endure.” That’s in part because “nothing can really replace the act of turning pages of a book,” he said.
Porter said he was lucky to have mentors to show him the way, including Margaret McElderry, Jean Karl, and Dick Jackson. Porter was himself honored as a mentor in 2015 as the recipient of an Eric Carle Honor. He recalled a party he went to early in his career at which McElderry was in attendance. He marveled at her career, thinking, “I could never get to that point,” but, he added, “It happened in the blink of an eye. It’s been a remarkable ride, one I didn’t anticipate.”
In retirement, Porter plans to spend time reading for pleasure again, something that book professionals often find themselves with surprisingly little time for. He is also considering working on his own writing and will continue with his volunteer activities with a New York literacy foundation.
