Hey, there. I’m Donna Beasley and I write and publish multicultural children’s stories. I started as a travel blogger. My blog turned into a digital travel magazine. In 2014, I was shopping for some children’s book for my 7 year old niece. I went to 4 downtown bookstores and could not find one book with a child of color. I was really shocked by this and decided to be the change I wanted to see. I sold my travel magazine and focused my skills to writing and publishing children’s books.
The joy of writing children’s books has sparked magic in my life. And now, I also work with mothers and grandmothers coaching them to write their first children’s book to spark their own magic.
Donna is currently revising her adventure novel
scheduled to be published in February, 2023.
Sparked by the monthly Dr. Seuss subscription that her mother used to teach her how to read at age 4, Donna Beasley, founder and publisher of Kazoom Kids Books has had a life-long love affair with books.
Chicago-born and raised – with stints in Atlanta, Minneapolis and Okinawa – this veteran marketer spent 25 years at the forefront of Black consumer advertising working on the accounts of global brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonalds.
It was the frustration of trying to find books featuring African American kids for her 7-year-old niece, that opened Donna’s eyes to the lack of quality children’s content for diverse families. Upon further research, she was stunned to find that only 6% of children’s books featured a child of color, despite the fact that 45% of children ages 5 to 9 in America are multi-cultural. This glaring statistic became her call to arms.
Donna launched Kazoom Kids Books in August 2016 and has since led the company through a successful Kickstarter campaign, prizes at Start Up Pitch competitions, the development of the proprietary iStory app and the creation of a rich library of digital books, some of which she has authored.
When she’s not planning new books for Kazoom Kids or writing her upcoming children’s adventure novel, you can find Donna hitting the ski slopes in winter, indulging her passion for photography or playing “way too much” Candy Crush on her phone. Not surprisingly, she is also a mean hand at Scrabble.