Who We Are
MB Publishing
Founded in 2003
WHAT’S INSIDE OUR BOOKS?
• Memorable stories filled with courage, history, humor, adventure, determination, love, and friendship that entertain, educate, and inspire young readers.
• Sparkling rhymes that help to build a child’s vocabulary and ignite a lifelong love of reading, learning, creating, participating, joining, leading . . . and wonder.
• Charming Illustrations of lively characters and detailed scenes to pore over . . . and to treasure.
MEET OUR TEAM
Author Photo: ©Susan Hornyak
Margie Blumberg, Publisher and Author
Margie Blumberg graduated from American University (with a degree in business administration) and from the University of Baltimore School of Law. She is a nonpracticing member of the Maryland Bar. While in law school, she spent many hours in the library drafting stories when she really should have been studying torts or contracts. Ultimately, the call of literature was too strong, and she followed her dream to become a writer, editor, and book publisher.
Just as her company's first book, Avram's Gift, was getting ready to go to press, she was invited to work on her cousin Leon Uris's last novel, O'Hara's Choice. She had the honor of editing his story for the abridged audiobook, which was narrated by John Bedford Lloyd (Nick in Crossing Delancey).
Margie loves collaborating with a team of talented illustrators, editors, graphic designers, musicians, and historians, and thoroughly enjoys working with authors to help them realize their own dreams. Thus far, MB Publishing has produced picture books, chapter books, middle-grade novels, audiobooks, Holocaust novels, Judaica, and an entertaining reference on English grammar.
With manuscripts to consider for publication arriving daily, Margie feels sure that something new and wonderful is just around the corner!
Jim Catler, Vice President
Journalist • Archivist • Marketing and Sales • Editorial • Voracious Reader • Marvelous Conversationalist • Uses Maps (Not Apps) to Get Places
Jim Catler is involved in all aspects of each project, including title acquisition, marketing, and manuscript review and development. With his background in journalism and business—and as an avid reader—Jim provides a treasure-trove of skills and a perspective that is always uniquely clarifying and insightful. Jim's innate talents, creative and intellectual work experiences, wisdom, and organizational know-how make every book project run smoothly to completion and beyond. With his added conversational abilities and his knack for brainstorming, active listening, and giving encouragement—and because of his all-around patience and good humor—Jim is the perfect partner for this publishing adventure!
Anne Himmelfarb, Editor
Anne Himmelfarb, a freelance editor, specializes in scholarly books on public policy, development, and risk. Her real love, however, is fiction and poetry, and she is thrilled to have had a chance to copyedit and/or edit a few picture books and novels for MB Publishing, including A Home for Hope!, Tutti's Promise, Escape in Time, Celtic Run, Chicago Bound, and Paris Secrets. Her favorite authors from the past are Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, and George Eliot; among contemporary writers, she especially admires Alice Munro and Philip Roth. Her favorite poets are William Blake, Robert Frost, and Philip Larkin. She is the mother of three grown children and the owner of one dog.
Emma Walton Hamilton, Editor
Emma Walton Hamilton, who has edited several picture books and middle-grade novels for MB Publishing (including A Home for Hope!, our bunny books, Celtic Run, and Chicago Bound), is Editorial Director for The Julie Andrews Collection (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and Harper Collins), a publishing program dedicated to quality books for young readers that nurture the imagination and celebrate a sense of wonder. She is also a faculty member of Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA in Writing and Literature Program, where she serves as Director of their annual Children’s Literature Conference, Co-Director of the Playwriting Conference, and Executive Director of YAWP (the Young American Writers Project), an inter-disciplinary writing program for middle and high school students. Emma also works as a freelance children’s book editor, and teaches courses in writing for children, both for Stony Brook Southampton and online. She lives in Sag Harbor, NY, with her husband, producer/actor Stephen Hamilton and their two children. For more information, please visit Emma's site.
PageWave Graphics
"The PageWave Graphics team has provided publishers with a high standard of book design and production for more than two decades. By bringing individual service and creative focus to every project, PageWave Graphics delivers tailor-made designs to communicate the essence of each book and the style of its publisher."
We've been working with PageWave Graphics since 2003 and couldn't be happier with their creativity, professionalism, and amiability. Visit PageWave Graphics to see more of their amazing work.
Left to right: Alicia McCarthy, Joseph Gisini, Daniella Zanchetta, and Kevin Cockburn.
Gwynne Phillips:
Actor, Writer, Singer, & Comedienne
Gwynne Phillips is a Toronto-based actor, writer, singer, and comedienne. She attended the UC Drama Program at the University of Toronto under the direction of Ken Gass and Berliner director, Johanna Schall. Gwynne is half of the acclaimed sketch comedy duo The Templeton Philharmonic. This duo has appeared at the New York, Chicago, and Toronto Sketch Comedy Festivals. It also took home the award for "Best Comedy Duo" at the L.A. Comedy Festival.
Happily, Gwynne has shared her lovely vocal talents with us for our "Shabbat a Lot" song, which is featured in our picture book A Gefilte Fishy Tale. For our picture book No Naptime for Janie! A Hanukkah Tale, Gwynne sings "Little Top, Stop Spinning: A Hanukkah Lullaby" and "Spinning Tops and Gelt Galore." And for our picture book A Home for Hope!, Gwynne sings "Hope's Song."