I’m a big fan of new beginnings. I still buy all new pens and notebooks at back-to-school time; I look forward for months to the first day of summer; I celebrate all major (or not-so-major) birthdays; and, of course, I believe it’s important to pay attention to the start of a new year. And this year, Groundwood feels especially full of new things that are worth attention.

As always, we are publishing new books — from authors and illustrators we have been proud to work with over many years, and also from creators who are new to Groundwood. Another new thing — and it’s a big thing — is that this season we are launching a new logo for the company. It will appear on all our books and print materials, on our website (more about what’s new with that below!) and in all the digital spaces that we increasingly occupy.

It is no small thing to create a new identity for a company as well-known and well-regarded as Groundwood, and the process of arriving at our new look took many months and involved many people. Historically, only the word “Groundwood” has appeared on our books — in effect, we have been a company without a logo and without a fixed identity, and while there is an understated confidence behind that approach, I believe that for the new environments where books are found and talked about, we need a single logo, one that will work on picture books as well as young adult fiction, playful books as well as serious ones, slender book spines as well as large banners — and in Twitter feeds as well as on business cards. Our goal was to create a logo that reflects our publishing philosophy, one that is flexible, curious, intelligent, and not entirely mainstream. I believe this is what we have achieved with the help of designer David Gee.

The new Groundwood logo will appear prominently on our new website, which will launch in the spring. If you want access to our full catalogue, you can still visit houseofanansi.com, but if you want a sneak preview of what our new website will look like, as well as information about all our Spring 2014 books, please go to our new microsite, which can be found at groundwoodbooks.com. Groundwood blog posts can be found at groundwoodbooks.com/blog from now on. I very much hope that you will like what you find there!