In 2017, a small group of Bay Area authors and illustrators had an idea. As creators of independent social justice-themed children’s books, we were acutely aware of the challenges people like us faced. We saw the importance of creating grassroots community-based children’s books, from and for our communities. While large national publishers were talking about the need for diverse books, independent and truly social justice-themed books were still largely marginalized.
We were very lucky living in the Bay Area where we have many creative folks working hard to break new ground. But many of us were working in isolation from each other. We saw the need for a book fair where independent book creators could sell their books to all the parents, educators, caring adults and kids who needed them! We added music, brought in local literacy and kid-oriented organizations, authors read their books to kids, and we threw in a fantastic MC.
And thus the annual Social Justice Book Fair was born, taking place annually in December. We’ve changed from year to year, including going completely online in 2020 (you can watch the video here). In 2024 we received our first grant from the Akonadi Foundation and became a fiscally-sponsored project of the Social Good Fund. And we look forward to growing and finding new ways to serve our community with our annual fair and more!
MISSION
Our mission is to promote social justice through the power of children’s books. We support independent children’s book creators to conceive, develop, distribute, and champion social justice-themed children’s books. We do this through our signature event, the annual Social Justice Children’s Book Fair, and other ongoing projects and initiatives.
VISION
We envision a world where children’s book creators have the ability to conceive, develop, distribute, and champion a diversity of social justice-centered stories that need to be told as they look to reach all children, families, teachers, librarians, and book lovers.
