Check out the PW profile of Jennifer Hunt, executive editor at Little, Brown Books For Young Readers, who has worked on several books nominated for the National Book Award, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, last year's winner.Hunt's childhood gives her a unique take on race and children's literature:
Her personal background—she was adopted and raised by a white family—plays a role in the books that interest her. “Fish-out-of-water and identity stories have special appeal to me,” she says. “Being [raised] in New Mexico and Colorado, where you do feel different a lot of times—there were things during my own childhood that I had to grapple with...”
Hunt believes that the biggest way in which her race affects her work is her ability to have frank discussions on the subject with authors.“We don't have to tiptoe around it,”she says, noting,“We still sometimes want to put writers in boxes, [but] I don't think about it that way. I just want to see just inventive stories.”