Born in Germany to Holocaust-survivor parents after World War II, Toronto publisher Margie Wolfe has for many years been engaged in the pivotal task of publishing Holocaust books that are being sold in some 50 countries around the globe, both in their original English and translated into about 40 languages.
Holocaust books for young readers are a main staple of Second Story Press, the company she co-founded with three partners 25 years ago. (Second Story will be holding a silver anniversary bash at the downtown Cecil Street Community Centre Dec. 5.)
Wolfe, who arrived with her parents in Canada in 1951, says the company has published about 20 titles to date in its Holocaust for Young Readers series, which – phenomenally – has achieved worldwide sales of more than two million copies.
Top-selling books have included such prize-winners as Hana’s Suitcase (2002) by Karen Levine, and the two titles by Kathy Kacer – The Secret of Gabi’s Dresser (1998) and Clara’s War (2000) – that first demonstrated to Wolfe that stories on the dark subject of the Holocaust, if told with care and sensitivity, could be appropriate for young readers. The series’s success has unquestionably broadened Holocaust lit’s horizons as a genre, she asserts. (The company now also distributes many titles in the Azrieli Foundation series of Holocaust memoirs.)
“I love it, love it, love it, every time one of our books is translated into German or goes into eastern Europe or to places where they’ve never heard of the Holocaust, like Indonesia, Korea, Iceland and Malaysia,” she says, adding that 95 per cent of the books’ readers are not Jewish.
“Last year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, one Brazilian publisher told a Canadian government official that Second Story books had transformed what kids were being taught in Brazilian schools. The magic of these books is that they are now all over the world.”
A 37-year veteran of the publishing trade and a former co-publisher at Women’s Press, Wolfe (who is president and publisher of Second Story) and her partners founded the publishing house on “a vision of doing women-focused human rights, social-justice books, primarily for adults but also for children.” That is still the company’s vision today. “We don’t do bunny-rabbit books,” she remarks.
Second Story has ventured into many subject areas and series, including mysteries, Gutsy Girl books and the I’m A Great Little Kid series, produced in co-operation with the Toronto Child Abuse Centre. It recently published The First Principles of Dreaming by Beth Goobie, her first adult novel, which shines a light on child abuse. Its First Nations books include Shannen and the Dream for a School, about events in Attawapiskat, the northern Cree community; the story is now being turned into a movie.
Second Story has also turned out several titles by local children’s author Anne Dublin, including profiles of journalist-activist June Callwood and athlete Bobbie Rosenfeld. Books on feminist history include the anthology Writing the Revolution by Michelle Landsberg, while LGBT-themed books include Branded by the Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington, which won the 2014 Canadian Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Literature. The press and its offspring have garnered a prolific number of literary prizes over the years.
Wolfe speaks proudly of innumerable new titles hot off the press, including Kathy Kacer’s latest, The Magician of Auschwitz.
“It’s an extraordinary true story. I just came back from Frankfurt, and there was all kinds of interest expressed in it from six or seven publishers from all over the world.”
Then there is Every Day Is Malala Day, Rosemary McCarney’s tribute to girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai, the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Wolfe was supposed to join Malala, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and 400 school girls at a Toronto-area school on Oct. 22, but Harper and Malala withdrew at the last moment because of the Ottawa shooting.
Twenty-five years into its mission, Second Story’s list of hundreds of published titles seems no less robust than its ambitious plans to publish many, many more from its headquarters in a renovated garment-district warehouse on Maud Street, in the Richmond-Bathurst neighbourhood. The company has a staff of seven and employs many freelancers and commissioned sales people as well. While the company has branched into digital books, sales of its traditional books remain strong.
“Nobody is saying any more, the way they said 10 years ago, that print is dead,” Wolfe declares. “Ten years ago they said that by this time, we would not be reading print. But that’s simply not true – and it’s certainly not true for children’s books.”
