the
story of BackPax:
innovative
media concepts celebrating children and their world
BackPax. The
name says a lot. For adventure, take a backpack. For a
commitment to our children and their world, think pax (Latin,
for peace). For quality children's media, think BackPax
audios, books, and games for the child who’s going places...
Distinctive
in approach and appeal, BackPax began with the need of a mother
– author-producer Janus Adams – to inspire and empower
her own children for success. “As parents, we all know the
difficulty of finding suitable materials for our children,”
says Adams. Taking a proactive, crusading role in her daughters'
entertainment and education led to BackPax. Now, twenty years
later, her babies are ladies and the BackPax family has grown
to include children the world over.
In 1986,
Adams officially began her publishing career as an activist parent.
From a need to improve the sight and sound experiences of her
own children – those hard-to-please in-betweens aged 8-12
– came a commitment to honor impressionable young minds with
fun, healthy, inspiring, non-violent entertainment. An Emmy-honored
broadcast journalist, a dramaturg who partnered with Yale School
of Drama and WGBH-Boston to launch a radio drama playwriting workshop,
an historian whose graduate degree in Pan-African Culture is considered
the nation’s first Master’s in Black Studies; this was
the background Adams tapped to create BackPax. “I wanted
my daughters and their friends to celebrate the world and their
lives,” says she.
“Children
are entitled to the best we have to offer. We, in the creative
industries, can do better than making ‘action’ and ‘adventure’
synonymous with violence. Cultural diversity and gender equity
are the essence of life by Nature’s plan, not alien concepts.
We all have unique strengths and abilities. Why do we have to
make things so hard?” This honest, straightforward appraisal
on behalf of children has been a hallmark of BackPax from the
start.
Adams recalls
the harrowing incident that sparked her idea for BackPax. In their
growing assimilation of television and nursery school stories,
her then-three-year-old twin daughters suddenly fled from a teenager
they’d known all their lives. Months later, better able to
express themselves they explained, “He’s Indian. Indians
are bad.” In that rejection was the flame that forged BackPax.
“I resented the ignorance into which they had been unsuspectingly
inducted,” says Adams. “Not only were our family beliefs
insufficient antidotes to that poison, their own love for the
boy was no match either. Something had to be done.”
In the words
of an African maxim resurrected by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison
and adapted by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for her book
on children’s rights, “It takes a whole village to raise
a child.” BackPax went to the “global village”
for live interviews, on-location recording, primary source documentation,
and the friendship of real people the world over, to raise children’s
insights and spirits with the greatest gift all – “the
best that is our selves,” says Adams.
While on
the road, the value of that approach etched real for Adams time
and again. Following old freedom trails for BackPax’ Underground
Railroad: Escape to Freedom book-and-audio, Adams met a descendant
of Harriet Tubman in upstate New York. Mrs. Gladys Bryant recounted
tales of her great grand-aunt’s heroism for Adams’ daughters
– accounts she’d heard as a child; stories her mother
had begun writing down the day after Tubman’s funeral. This
elder placed her mother’s original notes into the hands of
Adams’ daughters and produced a photo of herself as a child
graveside at the funeral in 1913. “No longer was this 'ancient'
history. My girls had tangible continuity with their past, and
a responsibility to the future.”
Traveling
the world for the series has afforded Adams unique perspectives.
Hence the BackPax commitment to on-location production, to giving
children a sense of “being there,” to linking the global
village to the nurturing of each child. En route, Adams has built
up a hefty cache of anecdotes – among them, the tale of the
rocks that upped and walked away. “You see, what makes the
Bayous of Louisiana so exciting is,” she explains, “the
region’s capacity for making the impossible possible. The
Bayous are full of tiny turtles; when they gather for their meetings,
they seem a field of gravel – that is, until these tiny ‘rocks’
up and walk away!”
In studio
for post-production on Cajun Country, Adams took an emergency
phone call. The shrimp boat captain she’d met (heard on the
tape welcoming Adams aboard for a trip into the Gulf of Mexico)
was repairing a rigging in a storm when he fell off and drowned,
“That’s when it all came home to me – how immediate
and fleeting such moments can be. We must preserve the stories
of who we are and who we want to be.”
Over an intensive
three-year period of Research and Development, audio and book
content was tested and re-tested on parents, teachers, and librarians.
Her credibility with adults established, Adams then took the series
to a team of experts – boys and girls of varied interests
and backgrounds. The BackPax Children’s Editorial Review
Board met monthly to dissect Adams’ ideas and the work of
other publishers. In their critiques of the evolving series, the
children were very blunt about what they wanted, what they liked,
what they didn’t like. “It was terrifying!” she
shudders, reliving her role as series creator. But, gratifying
too. She had challenged them to be tough. After all, other children
were depending on their judgment. Ultimately, their verdict –
a unanimous thumbs up – set the standard for the series.
More titles
were added. More series created. When a devoted fan and father
dubbed BackPax “Publishers to the Thinking Child,”
Adams knew her idea had achieved a major milestone in its quest
for excellence. An idea begun as a radio series with a production
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts had grown into
BackPax, a publishing company lauded for its imaginative, innovative
approach to children’s media by such respected voices as
Child, Essence, Instructor, Parents, and USA Today.
BackPax is the recipient of numerous honors including the Parents
Choice “Gold Seal” Award and American Library Association
kudos as a “Best of the Best!”
True to its
founding principles, BackPax book-and-audio adventures are entertaining
and educational; supporting and supplementing the 4th, 5th, and
6th grade language arts, math, science and social studies curricula.
Titles encourage critical thinking skills and stimulate creativity.
Audios strengthen listening skills. Accompanying guidebooks complete
the journey and extend the fun. Undergirding the BackPax series
are these commitments to families:
- to enhance
the existing curricula with materials supportive of and sensitive
to every child;
- to inspire
children with messages of history, heritage and hope;
- to provide
exciting, authentic expeditions to our wondrous world;
- to nurture
positive self-images through knowledge and imagination;
- to give
each child the best our world has to offer.
BackPax.
Our name says a lot: adventures in learning for the child who’s
going places…
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