📚 Shenanigans ensue

Heartdrum is an imprint of Harper Collins Children’s Books. Below, Heartdrum editor Rosemary Brosnan and curator Cynthia Leitich Smith celebrate its fifth anniversary and discuss what has changed since it began.

This spring, Heartdrum celebrates our five-year anniversary as an Indigenous-focused imprint of Harper Collins Children’s Books. We launched our first Heartdrum list in January 2021, and almost 40 books later, we have established a popular, acclaimed imprint with a defined identity. Our authors and illustrators have elevated children’s and young adult literature, receiving the Michael L. Printz Award, the William C. Morris Award, the Stonewall Award Honor, the Odyssey Honor, and many awards from the American Indian Library Association while making bestseller lists and being named to Reese’s Book Club.

Initially, we expected to publish two or three books per year, but the wonderful stories of many, many talented Indigenous authors changed our minds. We set out to acquire contemporary books, to fill a need for stories that reflected the lives of today’s Native children and teens. Most prior titles had presented Native people as ancient or even extinct or had been designed to teach non-Natives about Indigenous people. We embrace stories that speak to Indigenous kids’ lives. Heartdrum books are, first and foremost, for these kids and teens. They are not “tourist guides,” designed to explain Native people to outsiders. 

As with any good collection, our books contain all the elements of good stories, such as humor, romance, mystery, suspense, and heart. Plus, many are celebratory, balancing tough topics with pure joy.  

What has changed in the last five years? If a reader, caregiver, or educator is looking for range of books that reflect Indigenous experiences, popular genres, age markets, or intersectional identities, they can find those books. They can find books that acknowledge the past without stereotyping young heroes. We are in a completely different landscape than we were five years ago.

Our Heartdrum community is pleased that other publishers have joined us in raising up Indigenous voices. There is always room for more Native authors. That’s why we work in partnership with the We Need Diverse Books nonprofit organization to provide the annual WNDB Native Children’s-YA Writing Intensive. 

Since we launched five years ago, our books have been embraced by librarians, teachers, booksellers, and caregivers—but most importantly, they have been embraced by the kids themselves. 

We look forward to the next five years!