Robin Friedman at Absolute Write chats with Alexandra Cooper, Assistant Editor at Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers about what the publisher looks for from its authors, amongst other things:

What kinds of books do you like to work on?

Novels and pictures books represent different challenges. For novels, I love being in the trenches of writing-- figuring out how to solve problems on the sentence and paragraph level. I am a stickler for le mot juste! That's also essential in picture books, where the challenge is to find the right balance of text so that the illustrator can expand on the story. One of the most fun parts of the job is finding new illustrators! In both genres, I am interested in books with strong, spunky female protagonists with real voices that readers can relate to, even if the situations are foreign.

More here.