The Most Influential Children's Publisher You've Never Heard Of | Publishing Perspectives

Room to Read's mission was straightforward from the outset - literacy is the cornerstone of learning and getting an education is the best way to escape from poverty. By providing children with books they are offering the chance of a better life, but they quickly realised that one of the without books in the children's mother tongue it was sometimes hard to get them enthusiastic about reading.

This itself is part of the poverty trap. "Their parents can't afford books so the publishers don't publish books in those languages and so the kids are destined to grow up illiterate which to me just seems like a humungous lost opportunity when you think about the tens of millions of kids who will never see a book in the language they speak," says Wood.