Penguin Random House and First Book Celebrate 25 Years of Partnership – Roundtable

Mary Pope Osborne is the author of many award-winning children’s books, including retellings of mythology and folklore, picture books, biographies, mysteries, young adult novels, and the #1 New York Times bestselling Magic Tree House Series. An international phenomenon, the series has sold over 140 million books and been translated into 35 languages.   

Mary has traveled extensively in the US and abroad, visiting schools and speaking on issues related to children's literacy. In 2015, Mary formed the MTH Classroom Adventure Program, a free-of-charge extensive program for teachers to help bring the joy of reading into their classrooms. In collaboration with the First Book organization, she has donated over a million books to children in need.

Carmela Iaria, VP, School & Library Marketing & Creative Services Director at Penguin Random House, where she also sits on the PRH Intellectual Freedom Task Force. She has worked in children’s book publishing for over twenty years, all of those years in the school and library space. Her career began at Scholastic in the Book Club/Book Fair division where she learned not only about children’s books but also about the pivotal role educators play in readers’ lives. She worked on bestsellers such as Hunger Games and Captain Underpants before moving to PRH to head up the School & Library Marketing and Marketing Design groups for Penguin Young Readers. Carmela lives in New Jersey, vacations in Maine, and reads anywhere and everywhere.

Paula Willey (she/her) is part of First Book's Title Selection team. Co-author of The Passive Programming Playbook: 101 Ways to Get Library Customers Off the Sidelines, Paula reads hundreds of books a year looking for just the right titles to appeal to, educate, and entertain the students served by First Book's network of Title I teachers and others serving low-income communities. Formerly a public librarian in Baltimore, she writes and speaks on inclusive library programming, media literacy, service to people with justice system involvement, and the appeal of horror fiction to children and teens.

Jill Sonke, PhD, is a US Cultural Policy Fellow with Stanford University, serving in appointments at the National Academy of Medicine and Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She is Co-director of the EpiArts Lab, an NEA Research Lab, Director of Research Initiatives and Research Professor in the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and an Affiliated Researcher in the Jameel Arts & Health Lab. She is an artist, cultural strategist and mixed-methods researcher with 150+ publications and is recipient of 350+ grants and awards for her programs and research at the intersections of the arts and health.