DropCap Partner Spotlight: Common Deer Press
Our partners at Common Deer Press are on a very clear mission: “to publish extraordinary and enduring books for children and teens”. Take one look at their extensive backlist of titles, and you’ll see that they take that mission statement very seriously.
“The titles we represent from Common Deer Press are a great example of what our international translation rights buyers are looking for on an ongoing basis. The team at Common Deer make our jobs as translation rights agents a lot easier!”
says DropCap co-founder, Allison Olson.
Common Deer’s The Math Kids series has been translated into 4 languages to date, including Korean.
We recently sat down with Kristen Marion at Common Deer to ask a few questions about what the team is working on, to get some insight about the genres they specialize in and their thoughts about the future.
What are you working on at the moment?
As soon as we finished marketing our Fall 2022 releases, we jumped into editing, illustrations and book design for our Spring 2023 releases and initial edits for some of our Fall 2023 releases. Whew!
Publishing is always working on at least three seasons at a time.
Some of our authors have previous or upcoming podcast appearances and we are currently arranging in-person visits to bookstores for our Fall 2022 releases – the first post-pandemic!
Do you see any changing themes or topics in children’s publishing that have emerged over the past year or so?
We are seeing more middle grade and YA with the main characters of diverse ethnicities and gender identifications. We’re also seeing more series as young people get attached to characters and want to see how they progress through various adventures and situations. Fantasy and coming-of-age stories continue to be popular.
What can readers get excited about in the coming months from Common Deer Press?
Our Fall 2022 releases included an exciting new adventure for The Math Kids in A Knotty Problem and the first volume in a new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math/Medicine) series for Early Readers.
Asha and Baz is a time-travel series where two young students travel back in time to meet women in STEM and history who made amazing discoveries but didn’t get the credit which they deserve and whose discoveries or inventions are relevant today.
The first in the series is called Asha and Baz Meet Mary Sherman Morgan. Asha and Baz meet the woman responsible for discovering the rocket fuel required to bring the United States into the space race.
Three titles from the Asha and Baz series, written by Caroline Fernandez and illustrated by Dharmali Patel, which has won A Top Grade Books Fall 2022 selection for Early Readers as well as a 2022 Globe & Mail Kids' Gift Guide selection.
We are focusing on STEM series as we are finding that our readers not only enjoy a great story but they like to walk away feeling that they learned something cool. This has also helped us to promote our titles to parents, schools and libraries.
What does that creative process and selection look like?
We have a submissions page on our website that clearly outlines our ‘how-to-submit requirements for submissions, the type of content we’re looking for and what age groups we’re particularly looking for. At the moment we are particularly interested in middle grade and YA manuscripts with STEM content and/or BIPOC interest.
Submissions are made through our submission’s inbox or, very occasionally, through personal introduction.
What has it been like to work with the DropCap team?
It has been just great. I have found everyone to be both personal and professional as well as effective in promoting our titles to publishers in other countries.
And finally, a fun one: If you weren’t in the publishing world what would you be pursuing?
I’d be travelling again, particularly in southern Africa and writing my own books (oh wait, that’s still in the publishing world isn’t it! I’ll probably never get completely away from it..).
