I'm in New York this week but I wanted to share some news from Macmillan Spain, where we are developing our local publishing programme and have just launched three flagship literature collections for children.

The launch has been well received with coverage in the Spanish press and on children's publishing forums. As most of it is in Spanish I'm copying an English translation of the piece in Diario Siglo on 10 May:

The new Spanish imprint, Macmillan Infantil y Juvenil (Macmillan Children’s Publishing), that was presented today in Madrid, is be represented by three flagship collections: "Librosaurio", "El mundo de Rita" (Rita’s World) and "Pepe en Inglaterra" (Pepe in England). This is how it was outlined by  Jeremy Diéguez (Managing Director of Macmillan Spain) and Elisa Ayuso (Publishing Director), who stated that the official launch of this new publishing venture would take place on 2nd June coinciding with the Madrid book fair.

This imprint (which will be launched in both Castilian Spanish and Catalan) arises with the aim of "promoting creativity and offering quality books to children, future readers who we have to inspire", stated Elisa Ayuso. In her opinion, the success of this collection lies in the right choice of subjects, contents, authors and illustrators.

In the Librosaurio series the latter two have a particular prominence. In this way, Spanish authors and illustrators the likes of Alfredo Gómez Cerdá, Marinella Terzi, Vicente Muñoz Puelles, Rocío Martínez, Carlos Romeu, Sara Rojo, Paz Rodero, Tesa González, Juan Kruz and Juan Berrio, share the limelight with foreign authors Christine Nöstlinger (Austrian), Enrique Pérez (Cuban), Lawrence Schimel (American), Claudia Ranucci (Italian) and Fréderique Loew and Nathalie Choux (French).

TWO PECULIAR CHILDREN
The collection "El mundo de Rita" (Rita’s World), with text and illustrations by Mikel Valverde, has an eight year old as the main character. She is a short, dark-haired girl with a variety of situations and problems common to children of that age, who travels the world accompanied by her uncle Daniel.

The publishing house has made use of its experience in English language teaching to create "Pepe en Inglaterra" (Pepe in England), written and illustrated by Gordon Reece and which narrates the exploits of a Spanish boy on arriving at this country. "It is a way for the readers to take their first steps in English in a playful and effortless manner”, assured Paz Barroso, one of Macmillan Spain’s editors, explaining that illustrations of the characters with speech bubbles in English are inserted throughout the story of Pepe’s adventures.

Lastly, Jeremy Diéguez pointed out that despite the existence of quality titles for children and young people, this is “a good moment" to launch a series like the one proposed by Macmillan, as "the Spanish market is very open and tolerant of books of English origin".

A print run of between 4000 and 6000 copies of 54 titles (of which 34 in Castilian are to be launched this first year and 20 of them in Catalan) is foreseen.