Portland media company A Kids Company About has seen its mission tested in two very different ways this week.
On Wednesday, the day after 19 children and two adults were shot and killed in a school shooting in Texas, the company made a digital download of its book “A Kids Book About School Shootings” available for free. The book was written by Crystal Woodman Miller, a survivor of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.
The book is a resource to help adults and children talk about what happened. In the 24 hours after it was made available it had been downloaded 25,000 times, said Stephen Green, chief operating officer of A Kids Company About.
Following major news events the company has made several of its titles available for free download to help foster conversation and understanding. These include books about Covid-19, war and anti-Asian hate.
Separately, a program by insurance giant State Farm that featured three titles from A Kids Company About was dropped after a backlash.
A three-book series, written in partnership with the group the GenderCool Project about being transgender and nonbinary and being inclusive, was supposed to be distributed by State Farm to agents in Florida to disseminate into the community, according to a story in the Oregonian. The move was part of an effort to increase LGBTQ+ representation in books in a state where transgender and nonbinary people are coming under attack.
According to the O, after coming under conservative attack State Farm abandoned the program. The move by the insurer didn’t have direct business impact on A Kids Company About.
A Kids Company About specializes in producing media for children that takes on hard and important topics. Its book line includes titles about racism, body image, depression and belonging. The products are designed to facilitate discussions on these topics between children and the adults in their lives.
“Because of the subject matter of our books, they end up courting quite a bit of controversy,” A Kids Company About CEO Jelani Memory told the Oregonian. His own book, “A Kids Book About Racism” has been banned in some places, he said.
Since he launched the company Memory has been steadfast that the topics covered by the books, and now expanded media, are important for kids and adults and that kids are ready for these conversations.
The company's work with GenderCool is to go beyond mere allyship and to be an accomplice "standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the work of lifting up empowering stories and speaking to kids," said Green, adding that the company is doubling down on its partnership with GenderCool.
"Our mission is to equip adults with kids in their lives to be able to talk about the world around them, while speaking up to kids, and not down," he said. "This is why parents seek us out and point others to us in times of confusion and crisis."
