Updated September 2025: They are now an imprint of Learner Books and appear to no longer be open to direct submissions.
Soaring Kite Books’ tagline is “uplifting diverse stories”. They were founded by Ceece Kelley in 2020. Kelley has a background in brand marketing and creative services as well as a Master of Liberal Arts from Harvard University. You can learn more about Soaring Kite’s mission, authors, illustrators, and storytelling pillars, here.
They are distributed by Lerner Books which has a wide reach in the children’s market.
They are firmly focused on publishing stories about Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and underrepresented (Disability, LGBTQIA+, Neurodiverse, etc.) protagonists that are rooted in culture and family. Please do not submit books to them that are not aligned with their mission. You can see the books they have published so far here.
They are currently open to submissions of any topic, but with a strong preference/eye towards the following two themes:
- Father-Child; Paternal Bonding
- Black Joy/Cultural Stories (especially holidays)
They publish 8-10 titles a year. They are open to board books for 0-3 year olds with a 200 word upper limit, as well as picture books for 0-4 year olds with a 500 word upper limit. They also publish picture books for 5-9 year olds that are under 1,000 words in length, alongside Middle Grade Graphic Novels for 8-12 year olds (author illustrators are preferred for these).
They have no interest in manuscripts with main characters who are animals and they will not respond to these submissions.
You can read their submission guidelines here. They used to have an issue with having two contradictory submission guideline pages, but they have since resolved it.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2024 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
