Publisher Preview: Elsewhere Editions (Fall 2025)

Here’s a preview I’ve never attempted before! I had the great pleasure of getting a sneak peek into the independent publisher Elsewhere Editions’s upcoming season recently. Here you’ll find spoiled flowers, selfish winds, and the man who influenced Miyazaki. It’s not a huge list, but by god it’s a memorable one!

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The Magician’s Flower by Marika Maijala, translated by Mia Spangenberg

ISBN: 9781962770286

Publication Date: July 8, 2025

A sweet and dreamy little oddity of a book. Do any of you happen to remember that charming picture book from last year starring a runaway greyhound, called Rosie Runs? Same creator! Only this time, she’s using gouache rather than oil pastels in her art, giving this newest creation a rather different texture and feel. This latest title would also be a smaller scaled book than its predecessor. Translated by the same person as before, like Rosie this is a whimsical story, albeit with a slightly different feel. It revels in the pleasure of caring for a living thing that is more vulnerable than you are (a rather good topic for small children to read about, wouldn’t you agree?). In this story, we are introduced to the intimate friendship between two girls named Willow and Aspen. One day they discover a tiny plant in the corner of Willow’s greenhouse. The two tend to the plant and in the course of caring for it, end up taking it on a fun jaunt around town. Many of the pleasures of the book are rooted in this willingness to explore. In fact, in the course of this publisher preview, I was told that for these publishers, this book reminded them not a little of Marika’s own life. Apparently she’s quite eclectic. She makes loads of different kinds of art, in her adulthood she formed a band with other amateur musicians, and she has a willingness to experiment, which his book really channels. After all, it’s a story about learning and imagining together, meandering side-by-side. Then there are the cool details to be found in the illustrations themselves. Note the unusual shade of purple for the sky, or the mysterious buildings, with their shaded doorways and windows. The world of this picture book is a world in which kids have total freedom and autonomy. They’re living uninterrupted by adult interference. As such, the book is light on its feet, but is also capable of expressing ideas about what makes a person powerful versus what does benevolent power look like? All told, this is a fairly utopian little title.

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Take a Walk With the Wind by Xiong Liang, ill. Chloe Garcia Roberts

ISBN: 9781962770262

Publication Date: September 2, 2025

Meet one of the most popular author/illustrators in China! Xiong Liang is the kind of fella who is constantly nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, yet here in America we know next to nothing about him. Let’s see if we can change that now. One of the main things that characterizes Liango’s work is the way in which he straddles both the traditional and modern in his art. Now this particular book finds its roots in ancient Chinese poems. To create the art, Liang employs a technique that involves ink wash on silk which, as you might imagine, is very challenging. It’s a style that has existed for a long time, but for his purposes he’s reinventing the form specifically with children in mind. As for the texts of his book, he tends to work in the medium of traditional folk art, nursery rhymes, and Buddhist stories, putting a magical twist on them so that they feel new. In this story we meet mythical creatures called Treelings. One day the wind wakes one and they go on a walk together. Now in this story the wind can be a rushing, petulant, surging force. At one point it wakes a large bear and the Treeling has to apologize for the wind’s behavior. This goes on until finally the Treeling puts its foot down and asks the wind to walk with it, stride by stride. The ultimate feel of the book is very much in the vein of Alice in Wonderland and Studio Ghibli while remaining as inviting as something like The Snowy Day. Amusingly, there are some Treeling series titles for older readers out there as well (coming out in the future).

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Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa and Osamu Tsukasa, translated by Asa Yoneda and David Boyd

ISBN: 9781962770309

Publication Date: October 21, 2025

And our final book today (it’s a short list, no?) comes to us from Japan. I wonder, does the name Kenji Miyazawa mean anything to you? If not, he’d be worth looking into, particularly if you like to know your historical children’s literature. This is a creator recognized as a storyteller on par with the Brothers Grimm, and someone that heavily influenced Miyazaki. Indeed, the book of his that we’ll be talking about today has already inspired two feature films and a documentary! Additionally, reports say that there is a Pokemon character inspired by him, and he was a direct inspiration for the film My Neighbor Totoro. In this particular story, a boy has an after school job where he has to separate printing press letters and fonts with tweezers. Later, he finds himself on a galactic railroad to the stars alongside a school friend. Their subsequent adventures have their dark moments but overall the book brims with wonder. In its new iteration you can see that this book is infused with movement and warmth, and reading it you can feel the breath of what is possible in existence. There is also an element of existential questioning (What is life even for?) alongside the magical experience of being on a train. You can definitely feel the influence of Greek mythology in this work (there’s a kind of a River Styx feel to the journey). Now to be perfectly fair, this isn’t the first time Miyazawa has been published in the states. There have been other translations, but mostly they were never widely distributed, and usually they were of his adult work. Heck, in 2018 the New York Review of Books published a collection of his stories called Once and Forever. Please note, though, that Night on the Galactic Railroad was not a story included in that volume and it pleases Elsewhere Editions to no end to tell you that they’ll be doing more of Miyazawa in the future, don’t you worry.

And that is it! Thanks to Emma Raddatz and Sarah Gale for taking the time out of their day to show me all these books! A lovely array, one and all!

Filed under: Publisher Previews