Portland book company ‘A Kids Co.’ is acquired by DK publishing

The Portland-based book company “A Kids Co.,” which has created books such as “A Kids Book About Racism” and “A Kids Book About Empathy,” was recently acquired by the British publisher DK.

The partnership establishes DK’s first U.S.-based children’s creative team. A Kids Co. began in 2018 when founder Jelani Memory wrote “A Kids Book About Racism” for his six children. Now, A Kids Co. has published over 30 books featuring authors such as Billie Jean King, Jessica Biel and Ashley Graham. The company now also produces podcasts and television shows, in addition to books.

Memory joins us to talk more about his entrepreneurial journey.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Five years ago, the Portlander Jelani Memory wrote a book for a very small audience. He called it “A Kids Book About Racism.” The kids in question were his own. But it turned out many more people were interested in the book and in the many titles that have followed. Memory ended up creating a company that’s put out a whole series of books for kids, close to 200 now. He focuses on a lot of topics that adults are often reticent to talk about with young people, like school shootings, trauma, addiction and sexual abuse. “A Kids Co.” was recently acquired by the British publisher DK.

Jelani Memory joins us now to talk about entrepreneurship, this new deal and what kids need. It’s great to have you in the studio.

Jelani Memory: It’s so good to be here, Dave.

Miller: So the book that started this whole thing off, “A Kids Book About Racism” – can you tell us a story of why you wrote it?

Memory: Yeah. I wrote it five years ago for my kids. I have a big family, six kids, four stepkids and two Black biological kids. I wanted them to navigate racism in a thoughtful and mindful way. For my white kids to not be that kid in class, saying that thing or doing that thing that was going to harm someone or hurt someone. And for my Black and Brown kids, for them to know what they might experience or at least know what I experienced. I just wrote it for my kids, but they were the ones who encouraged me to do more with it, to take it to a broader audience. And so that really kicked off not just that book going out into the world, but of course, the 100-plus books that we’ve made since then.

Miller: So when you say that you just made it for your kids, did you actually create a full-fledged book with a binding, or is it just like you went to Kinko’s and made a very pretty PDF for six kids?

Memory: I wrote it in a couple of weeks. I used InDesign to design it and I used a free service online to get a printed copy. I remember when it came in the mail, I was excited, the kids were excited. It was this embodiment of my story and also trying to carry on a conversation with my kids that I thought was so very important.

Miller: You printed that one copy because, as you said, you didn’t see a reason for a second one. When exactly did that change?

Memory: It really changed quite quickly. My kids said, “This is great, dad. You should make more books on big topics.” And I said, “Like what?” I remember my son, Jay, said, “You should make a kid’s book about divorce.” And in that moment he gave me two gifts. One was to understand that I could do more than just a kid’s book about racism, that I could really do a kids’ book about anything. But that by me telling my story and being vulnerable, that it opened it up for him and the rest of my kids to be vulnerable about their own stories and their own experiences. And it unlocked all sorts of new conversations.

From there, I left the other company that I started, Circle Media Inc., to go start this wild and crazy kids book company called “A Kids Book About.” And it was nine months later that we launched into the market with 12 books on anxiety, money, creativity, adventure. It was off to the races from there.

Miller: I mean, it seems like the whole thing was a race. It’s blindingly fast. How did you get nine books within nine months?

Memory: A big part of it was the process we designed to make these books. I think publishing traditionally has been really exclusive and we wanted it to be inclusive. So we designed this one-day writing workshop process that could allow anyone to come in and tell their story. So I went to colleagues, to friends, to acquaintances, relationships of relationships, to find voices, to sit inside these topics, like feminism, like trauma, like love, like suicide, like … you name it. If it’s a big topic for kids, we’ve often written about it. We did this one-day process with each of those authors and designed a beautiful typographically driven book that really talks up to kids and not down to them, that teaches them that they’re ready for these big topics and really teaches the grown ups in their lives as well that they’re ready.

Miller: So you’re saying that you can, as a team, write a book for kids about suicide in one day?

Memory: Not only am I saying we can do that, we have done that over 200 times.

Miller: And that’s better than taking months to do it?

Memory: It’s better than taking months to do it. It’d be like saying, is it better to do therapy for one hour or for five hours at a time? It’s almost too much to do a longer session. Actually, that smaller session is more manageable from just our motion and sort of therapeutic perspective. We’ve taken the same approach to writing these big topics for kids, containing it into this very tightly packed, urgent situation that says we are going to try and write something that is honest, that is thoughtful for kids, and again, respects their experiences, thoughts and emotions. We’ve done this with kids, with celebrities, with icons – LeVar Burton, Ziggy Marley, Billie Jean King – and it works every single time. In fact, [it] works in such a way that I don’t think there’s another way to write these kinds of books.

Miller: What was your starting point when you decided you wanted to sell the first book or maybe, at that point, sell the growing family of books? You were already in the business world, in the media world. But had you had a publishing company before?

Memory: No.

Miller: OK, so how did you start?

Memory: I mean, Google can be your best friend in these situations. I remember I read a book published by a gentleman here in town named Joe Biel and it’s called “A People’s Guide to Publishing.” I remember, in a week, I read it cover to cover. I was like, OK, I think I understand this business a little bit, but I’ve learned all these other things from running a direct-to-consumer business, and building products and brands before. I think I can bring those into this business because the thing about publishing, traditionally, is publishers aren’t brands. You don’t buy a book because it’s made by Simon and Schuster, or Penguin Random House, or McGraw Hill. You buy it because of the author of the topic. And I thought if the publisher could be a brand – like Nike, or Coca Cola, or Adidas – there would be a relationship there. If we could build some real trust with teachers, aunties, uncles, parents, grandparents, that we could continue to deliver these stories in a trusted way to the kids in their lives.

So it was brand first, “A Kids Book About,” and we were gonna go direct to the consumer, which in the publishing world is just like unheard of. Everybody works with the distributor. Everybody goes through Amazon. It was, “Come to our website. We’re gonna curate this list of books for your 5- to 9-year-old that is gonna be either challenging, empowering or important.”

Miller: Did it work from the beginning?

Memory: It did. I mean, I remember I was blown away. The very first day folks showed up and they bought these books, and didn’t just buy one book or two books, [but] three, four, five, six books. And then I had teachers calling me, librarians, bookstores, going, “These books are amazing. One, you should do these next 10 topics. But two, we want to buy them and make them available to the kids in our lives.”

Miller: Did you see a bump? I’m wondering about the kids’ book about racism in particular. Did you see a bump during the racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd, when a lot of white people started paying more attention to race than they had in the past, frankly.

Memory: There was an extraordinary bump. I mean, if you look at the chart, it just goes straight vertical from a sales perspective. And I remember feeling really torn in that moment. It was literally the day after the video of George Floyd being murdered, our sales are going off the charts. I, for a moment there, thought maybe I should just shut this whole thing down. Like, I don’t want to be profiting, making money or capitalizing on this moment that’s really full of grief. And it took some really thoughtful investors and advisors to go, “Jelani, you’re not just selling T-shirts. You are selling a real solution to folks who have real problems starting these conversations with not just the adults in their lives, but especially with their children.”

In a week’s time, we not only sold 50,000 copies of my book, “A Kid’s Book About Racism,” we sold out of every book we had in stock. And it really started our journey of trying to meaningfully engage in moments where white parents, Black parents, old parents, young parents, found themselves totally bereft of having a certain conversation with the kids in their lives. They just didn’t know where to start. Our books became a place to start.

Miller: It’s fascinating that was a kind of proof positive of your business theory, that if there was a huge bump in sales for a book about racism following the George Floyd murder, that wouldn’t necessarily lead to a bump in sales for other books that had nothing to do with that particular topic. But it seems like it was tied together. People bought one book and then they would buy others as well.

Memory: Yeah. And look, as a parent of six kids, once you start to have those hard conversations, you start to realize all the ones you’re not having with your kids. You start to open the door there and you find that they’re curious, and they’re creative, and they’re thoughtful when it comes to navigating these big topics. I like to say, start every conversation too early instead of too late. And our books, just on their very face, represent this idea of starting these big conversations with the kids in your life.

Miller: Just going back to what you were just saying, has creating this brand, working on all these books, changed your approach to parenting, or is it a reflection of something you already thought about what you wanted to be as a parent?

Memory: I’d say it’s both/and. I grew up without a dad, and a single mom that raised four kids all by herself. She worked nights as a nurse, putting food on the table, and slept a little bit during the day, and drove us to soccer practices, karate and all the things. Through that experience, I wanted to be the dad that I didn’t have, which meant sort of inventing some new tips and techniques. I remember wanting those big conversations to happen with the grownups in my life and they just didn’t happen when I was a kid. So I thought, I’m gonna try and have these conversations almost painfully too early, to just see if it’ll work, to see if my kids are gonna be OK – not just OK, but empowered by having them.

Then I figured out that, even still trying to have them very early, my kids were already ahead of the game, that they’d go, “Oh, yeah, I already learned about that at school” or, “We’re already talking about that.” I remember we were working on a kids’ book about school shootings with Crystal Woodman Miller, survivor of the Columbine shooting. And I was telling my eight-year-old daughter at the time about this book and why it’s so important. I was trying to open up the conversation on school shootings. She goes, “Dad, I already know about that. That’s code red.” And I said, “What’s code red?” She goes, “Dad, we do a drill every month, an active shooter drill at school.” And I thought, I had no idea. I thought I was early to the conversation. I thought I was up to speed, and yet I was already so late.

So even as I’ve embraced that ideal as a father, to start these conversations too early instead of too late, I think my kids continue to surprise me that they are so ready, and ready much earlier than we even think.

Miller: Given that, what does the phrase “age appropriate” mean to you? How do you think about that, about what a 4-year-old is ready to understand or the ways in which they’re ready to take in big topics, versus an 8-year-old, versus a 16-year-old? I mean, you say that they’re ready and we should start earlier than we think. But that’s just the beginning of the engagement. I’m curious how you think about age? And it’s worth pointing out for folks who haven’t seen your website that you do have a sort of a double system. You do have books for younger readers and books for older readers. I forget the exact ages, but it’s like maybe a 6-year-old versus a 12-year-old. So there is a division in your mind?

Memory: There is a division in my mind and we like to talk about developmentally appropriate as opposed to age appropriate.

Miller: Because there is variation in each individual.

Memory: Exactly. And one of the very specific cues that is our 0 to 4 book series, that are board books, are fully illustrated. To just engage a 2-year-old, 3-year-old, 4-year-old, you need pictures to engage their mind. But once kids have started school and you get them 5, 6, 7, 8, now they’re actually dealing with words, they can read and they’re having experiences outside of the home.

The second part is, when you have a kid who runs into one of these events, whether that’s they’ve experienced racism themselves, they’ve experienced a death in the family, they have a sibling or an auntie or an uncle that’s dealing with addiction, when they are confronted with that, then the question is not, is it too early to introduce this? It’s, how actually are we going to deal with this moment happening?

And then the third piece is you have to ask yourself, as a parent, do we want to address these things after the kids’ systems are sort of shocked by the event? Or do we want to prepare them for the possibility of it and warm them to it, so that when they see it they understand it, whether that’s a topic around mental health, like depression or anxiety, or a topic like racism or prejudice or sexism. I like the idea and I think we continue to find this proves itself out, that starting these conversations before those moments of shock occur is actually really beneficial for kids.

But then it’s not an option to just sort of sweep it under the rug, which I think many of us as kids were used to. Something big would happen, it would get swept under the rug. At that moment, it’s really great to engage in a really honest, candid and straightforward way with kids.

Miller: Do you find that you have to do a lot of convincing right now, that you’re pushing against a dominant idea in parenting, or is your audience – and I guess I’m thinking about the buying audience is most likely the adults in kids lives, I assume – do you find that, more or less, they’re on board and they’re looking for tools?

Memory: There’s two parts to this. The fear is still there.

Miller: What do you think is the fear?

Memory: The fear is that you might hurt your kid, injure your kid, break their innocence, say something too early or the wrong way, or they might repeat something to another kid, right? You wanna tell a kid Santa Claus doesn’t exist and all of a sudden they’re going to school telling the other kids. So there’s a worry that because it wasn’t done for us as kids, we’re not quite equipped to know how to do it for them.

But the other side, and I hear this from parents again, and again, and again – they say “Jelani, I wish I had these books when I was a kid.” So what we’re tapping into is we’re almost allowing those parents, educators, grandparents, aunties, uncles and coaches to reclaim their childhood, to give their kids something that they didn’t have and almost heal that inner child in them that wishes that they got to connect with the adults in their lives in that way.

Miller: I heard you say something interesting. I think it was in a TED talk at some point, that you had thought because you grew up basically with a single mother from a relatively early age, if not something unique about your childhood, you were missing out on something that a lot of other kids had, in terms of access that they had to information about the world or more conversations. And then as you’ve gotten older, you realize that what you experienced was actually relatively common, in terms of how much you were told. I’m curious how learning that has affected the way you think about what you’re putting out into the world?

Memory: Tremendously so. I think one of the most valuable messages you can deliver to any child is to tell them “you’re not alone” – and to prove it to them. Vague metaphors and dinosaurs that don’t get along because they’re red or blue, or sort of far off land stories, don’t necessarily connect with their real on-the-ground life.

Miller: It’s so funny you brought that up as a metaphor. I’ve been thinking that one of the things that is an old version of what you’re trying to do is “Mr. Rogers,” where there was some kind of puppetting metaphor. I mean, sometimes it was very clear – he’s talking to you. But you’re saying that one of the values of what you’re doing here is that this is not an analogy. This is just straight talk.

Memory: Exactly. And there’s a place for all different kinds of storytelling. I love a Pixar movie just as much as the next guy. But there is a way that when we reflect a real true first-person story from a real voice to a kid – and they are going through something similar – they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel known and they don’t feel so alone. That message is so empowering for them. I think when parents see that in their kid, they go, oh my God. I can’t believe I withheld all these things because I thought it would damage my kid. I now realize it’s actually made them come to life.

Miller: Were you shopping your company? Were you looking for a buyer?

Memory: No, and for a handful of reasons. I knew what we were doing was so disruptive, unique, strange and boundary pushing, that there are very few companies that could be good caretakers for that sort of thing. And one of the reasons that we sold the publishing business to DK is we already had a prior relationship with them through a licensing arrangement.

Miller: That they were already selling some of your titles.

Memory: Exactly. And they didn’t want to change a single thing. They loved how honest, forthright and respectful they were of kids’ intelligence. By the way, most of our books don’t have pictures in them. They just have words and design, and they’re laid out really lovely, about 64 pages in an 8 x 10 format. They didn’t want to change a thing because they understood the way that it connected with kids. And they, as a 50-year-long brand, have been about teaching big ideas to kids ever since the beginning. We are a continuation, maybe in a more aggressive way than any other company that they’ve ever worked with.

Miller: And less visually busy than a lot of their books.

Memory: Exactly. And look, I get asked this question by adults all the time – kids never ask us. They go, “why are there no pictures in here?” It’s because, I go, “our books let kids in on a secret that adults aren’t willing to tell them.” They’re sensitive and they understand adults don’t want to tell them. But once they’re let in on that secret, they’re engaged, they’re interested, they’re curious. And the very first thing that happens after kids read our books, they don’t go play with toys or go somewhere else, or go play video games. They often engage in a meaningful conversation with a grown up in their life and reveal something that they hadn’t revealed before, because there wasn’t the room, or space, or that door hadn’t been open to talk about that thing. But once “A Kids Book About Racism” enters the house, it’s now the grown up saying, “I’m gonna be OK if we talk about this.” Not, “You’re gonna be OK. I’m gonna be OK and it’s OK if we talk about it together.”

Miller: Has there been any topic that you turned down because you couldn’t figure out a way … I was going to say because you didn’t think it was appropriate, but clearly, I think I know the answer to that one … but you couldn’t figure out a way to get the book right?

Memory: No. The challenge every single time we tackle one of these topics is the voice and the author who is going to tell this story. Who can stand in the shoes of this topic from a first-person perspective, or with such a deep expertise and knowledge that they can bring a clarity to it, honesty to it and sort of an unimpeachable-ness to it. So that typically is a challenge. We get pitched books all the time from everybody and picking the right voice ends up being the largest challenge. From there, getting the topic right is just really leaning on the identity, the voice, and the thoughts, feelings and experience of that individual.

Miller: So you become a kind of talent scout.

Memory: Yeah, 100%. And that’s my favorite part of my job – finding the right voice to sit inside of a topic. Sometimes we’re not sure about the market viability of a topic, but we all sort of intuitively go, “God, this should have existed when I was a kid. I should have learned about periods,” or “I should have learned about depression,” or “I should have learned about how to think about my body image” Then identifying the right voice to sit inside that topic. Again, it’s a challenge but it’s the joy of doing this work so that we can represent a diversity of voices across these topics, in a way that kids feel the authenticity come through.

Miller: Since you started the series, a big backlash has developed to curricula both about race and racism, and gender, as well as broadly what’s called social and emotional learning – all issues that you either focus on in your books or are just completely embedded in your entire project. What’s it been like for you to see this happening in real time, to see the politicization of your project?

Memory: I’ll answer in an unconventional way. I get to visit a new elementary school just about every week, if not every other week when school is in session. Once teachers, librarians and principals realized I would come for free, they started asking me a lot. And the thing that I am always pleasantly heartened by is that while we adults are arguing over whether these things are appropriate for kids, or should they be in schools, or the book bans, or this is going to be a part of the curriculum, or this is not … kids, they want to dive into this stuff so much. They’re so interested, they’re so eager.

Every time I do an assembly with the grade school – sometimes it’s K-5, sometimes it’s 3-5, I ask kids to pitch me books. What would you write about? What do you think should exist? You’d think it’d be all “Minecraft,” video games and candy. But actually, it’s really meaningful fundamental topics: war, abuse, toxic relationships, love, losing a sibling, having an incarcerated parent. These are all real ideas given to me by grade schoolers and they’re not telling me that they wish this existed for them. What they’re saying is this is what I’ve been through. This is what I’ve already experienced. This should exist for other kids – so they know. They’re so ready. And we grown ups, we’re playing catch up.

So I have faith and belief that as this generation of kids grows up with these stories, and this readiness and this hunger for them, they’ll be the ones to change things. They will actually build the future that they wish existed.

Miller: Jelani Memory, thanks very much.

Memory: Thank you.

Miller: Jelani Memory is founder and executive chair of “A Kids Co.” Do you say “A Kids Company” or “A Kids Co.”?

Memory: “A Kids Co.”

Miller: “A Kids Co.” I will get it right at the very end of our conversation. [Laug

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