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Speak Up Santiago is the first book in the Bull Hill graphic novel series by Julio Anta (Frontera) and Gabi Mendez (Lo and Behold). And, with a second untitled Bull Hill graphic novel, Shana Corey at Random House has bought world rights for an unnamed six-figure sum.
The first book follows 12-year-old NYC kid Santiago, the son of a Colombian American father and white American mother. Santi isn’t fluent in Spanish, so when he spends a summer upstate with his Spanish-speaking Abuela and joins a soccer team made up of other Latinx kids, he must find his voice and his confidence.
Julio Anta tweeted “Gabi Mendez and I are working on a Middle Grade graphic novel series! Book 1 is called SPEAK UP SANTIAGO and comes out Spring 2025! Book 2 in 2026. Published by the good people at Random House! Co-creating this cast of characters and working with Gabi has been a dream. She’s doing amazing work. I can’t wait for you to come to BULL HILL (our series name) We’ve got soccer, insecurities about speaking Spanish, what else do you need?? I’m so excited about SPEAK UP SANTIAGO, and the entire series of middle grade graphic novels we’re building that will spawn out of book 1! See you in 2025”
Bull Hill: Speak Up Santiago will be published by Random House in the spring of 2025 and book two in the spring of 2026. Julio Anta and Gabi Mendez’s agent Jessica Mileo at Inkwell Management represented the deal.
The expansion of children’s graphic novels is fuelling all manner of publishers extending into the comics medium. Right now it seems like an infinite market that is being tapped into, and creating longstanding comic book readers for decades to come. It is not for nothing that kids graphic novels in bookstores are being referred to as the newsstand of the twenty-first century, and the future readers of the medium are being formed and created right here, right now.
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