The New York Review of Books’ Children’s Collection is launching a new paperback imprint, NYRB Kids, starting with two titles releasing on September 8. It will begin with two strong performers in the Children’s Collection’s existing backlist – The 13 Clocks and The Pushcart War, and editor Edwin Frank hopes to continue printing two to three titles a season.

Frank told PW that the idea for an imprint had long been circulating around the NYRB offices. “We’ve been thinking of doing it for quite a while, because after all, publishing is about getting books to the public in the simple sense,” he said. Starting with one of its bestselling titles, James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks, originally released in 1950 and reprinted by the press in 2008 with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, the imprint will release less expensive paperback editions of existing hardcovers, complete with full-color illustrations. The second title for fall is The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

The spring 2016 list will include Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows, which Frank called “a title of some complexity and emotional depth,” and Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding, “an Australian classic with swagger and a funny narrative,” as well as T.H. White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose, which Frank described as a “comic romp and very clever, in the way White is in The Once and Future King.”

For now, the books will be selected from the collection’s already deep backlist, but Frank may consider paperback originals in the future. For Frank, the particular focus of this new imprint will be novels, with no plans to include picture books. His aim is to reprint “books with a strong narrative component, [which] appeal not only to children but parents and readers of some energy and vigor.”