Set up in 2024 by Ken Wilson-Max, an advocate for inclusion and diversity in publishing, Kumusha Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, is a globally inclusive, empathy-led, commercial list of high-quality books for children. It highlights similarities over differences and reflect the rich make-up of culturally diverse places.  

The word Kumusha (pronounced koo-moo-sha) is from the Shona language in Zimbabwe. It is a concept describing the place you are from, or tied to, and means ‘ancestral home’. The list publishes established authors and illustrators alongside new voices from different communities across fiction and non-fiction, spanning from pre-school to chapter books.  

Our aim is to create books for all children to see themselves as they are and as they want to be. The list acknowledges children’s ‘third’ culture – whose formative years are spent in a different culture to that of their parents’. We want children to find themselves in these books.