The rooster has landed

Just in time for the holidays, our new adventure The Year of the Rooster has arrived!

This is the 12th and final adventure in our annual series Tales from the Chinese Zodiac.

Ray is a young chick who has a bundle of energy! He and his friend, the girl Ying, embark on an incredible journey to find a mysterious and magical creature. But can Ray discover his own calling along the way?

The fantastic art is by Juan Calle, who created our recent superhero story Good Dream, Bad Dream.

The Rooster, like 2016's The Year of the Monkey, features a bilingual translation in simplified Chinese.

Good news! Barnes & Noble bookstores nationwide will sell The Year of the Rooster in their Chinese New Year displays in their children's sections in January 2017.

Also select Costco and Hallmark stores will carry our book to the delight of lucky shoppers.

Ray looks forward to flying into your hearts!

Happy Holidays from Max the Monkey

Everyone's heard of the Monkey King right? 

The Journey to the West has inspired countless adaptations across the centuries. As legend has it, Wu Cheng'en wrote this Chinese novel during the 16th century's Ming dynasty. Later the story became renowned as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. The others are Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber.

Modern versions of Journey to the West include the popular manga and anime Dragon Ball Z, created by Japan's prolific comics artist Akira Toriyama in 1984.  As a little child, Goku starts off with a nice brown tail... but then it gets cut off! Ouch! A nice cartoon version of a boy's timeless rite of passage into adulthood, wouldn't you say? As a small consolation, at least in the future Goku gains a power that would put Clairol and many hairdressers out of business - our spiky headed hero enjoys free and instant hair coloring when he goes Super Saiyan.

In 2008, Hollywood was inspired. Lion's Gate got the bug with its Hong Kong flavored flick The Forbidden Kingdom. Here martial arts maven Jet Li transforms into old furry face himself to square off against the drunken master Jackie Chan. It's sort of the Asian cinematic equivalent of the Street Fighter IV but with better actors than Kylie Minogue and Jean Claude Van Damme.

In 2013 Kung Fu Hustle's Stephen Chow directed (but not starred) in a film aptly title Journey to the West. Therein the Buddhist hero undertakes the famed adventure by protecting a town from demons, falling in love with another fetching fighter, and searching for the fabled Mon-king.

Naturally, given the homegrown subject matter, this movie earned the most of any film in  China in its first day (beating the Transformers: Dark of the Moon only to be bested by the Transformer's even more boffo sequel Age of Extinction in 2014). Soon Chow's Journey became the highest grossing Chinese-language motion picture ever. Poor Wu Cheng'en. If he only had Walt Disney's lawyers, then he'd still be earning royalties.

Our first copy hot off the presses, nicely couched in the heavens.

Now what room in the world is left to say or show anything about the mythic Monkey King?

Well, we knew the upcoming turn of the calendar into 2016 (February 8th to be exact) would herald The Year of the Monkey.

What better way to commemorate this tradition (which has been celebrated for millennia) than to create a brand new character?

Viola!

Max is the son of the legendary Monkey King and Monkey Queen!

Sure this tyke has a lot to live up to (don't we all)...but even the sky is the limit for Max! But like kids everywhere, Max is learning how to learn...as well as squeezing in as much fun as possible!

Amazingly illustrated by the DreamWorks animator Kenji Ono, The Year of the Monkey will inspire readers to fly high! We look forward to sharing this fabulous new 11th adventure in our series Tales from the Chinese Zodiac in the coming year.

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage month... but still needs more diverse children's books

As you may know, the month of May commemorates the contributions and cultures of Asian Pacific Americans.

So it is notable that recently American publishers have recognized (again) that 90% of their children's books don't include diverse faces and themes.

A March New York Times article "Where are the People of Color in Children's Books?" rekindled the debate. The ensuing media coverage prompted New York publishers to form "task forces" to address the issue, get photographed doing so, and create Twitter hashtags - that's sort of like an interagency SWAT meeting without the guns or vans or deadlines. More concretely, School Library Journal dedicated their May issue to the topic of diversity.

There is nothing new under the sun, but the problem is real.

Capitalism is the wheel that drives industry. Superheroes, wizards, vampires, and female archers sell books. Publisher may wonder if Asians, Latinos, and Blacks buy enough books that feature characters like themselves. But it seems like publishing is even lagging behind TV and movies (which can't brag about their track records either) in including minority (soon to be the majority) actors. Even when you factor out the ubiquitous presence of Samuel Jackson, the boob tube is doing a better job than book publishing.

We founded Immedium in 2005 to address this very issue.

One-third of our stories (a dozen and counting) have been multicultural.  We've introduced Asian American characters in Tales from the Chinese Zodiac, Julie Black Belt, and Sora and the Cloud, who appeal to readers universally. This fall, we'll produce our first Spanish bilingual adventure with Liberum Donum, artists from Bogota, Columbia.

This week School Library Journal cited Sora & the Cloud in their culturally diverse book lis:

"An adventurous young boy takes flight on a friendly cloud in this delightful whirlwind of a daydream. The story is artfully structured, with reality turning to fantasy as Sora (a name that means “sky” in Japanese) climbs a tree and hops aboard a cloud for a whimsical journey above the city. His fanciful vision gently gives way to reality again when he drifts to sleep on the cloud and dreams of pleasures grounded in everyday life, like splashing in puddles and digging in sand at the beach. Sora’s airborne fantasy is charmingly depicted with a dreamlike palette of pastel colors. The San Francisco setting in combination with the bilingual text deftly shows the child’s Japanese American identity."
Therefore we celebrate the symbolism of May with you. We hope to continue sharing your journey of cultural exploration and appreciation.

New 2012 book catalog

We've added 4 upcoming titles for your viewing pleasure!

Three are scheduled for publication in Fall 2012:

1. Justin Time: The Pancake Express by Brandon Scott (September).

This is a new series, adapted from episodes from the TV show of the same name, which began airing in the USA on PBS Sprout in April, and will broadcast on the Disney Channel in Canada in September. Watch a clip at www.justintime.net.

2. Animal's Don't, So I Won't by David Derrick (September).

This is Dave's 2nd story. His debut storybook was the humorous Sid the Squid and the Search for the Perfect Job.

3. The Treehouse Heroes, written by Phil Amara and illustrated by Alina Chau (October).

This original adventure is like an Asian version of The Teen Titans :) - penned by a veteran comics scribe and brought to colorful life by a popular professional animator.

Then the fourth will ring in the new year 2013:

4. The Year of the Snake, 8th in the Tales from the Chinese Zodiac series, written by Oliver Chin and illustrated by Jennifer Wood.

Peruse our catalog on the comfort of your own computer screen and download the Acrobat PDF.
http://www.immedium.com/products/immedium2012catalog.pdf