BOSTON (JTA) — The founders of Kar-Ben publishing company are retiring after forty years in which they helped reshape the world of Jewish children’s books to reflect the diversity of contemporary American Jewish life.

They will step down as editorial directors this month, according to Publishers Weekly.

Judye Groner and Madeline Wikler started Kar-Ben publishing in 1974 to self-publish their co-authored book, “My Very Own Haggadah,” after being turned down by several publishing houses. The first run of 5,000 copies sold out and the book, still in print under the Kar-Ben imprint of Lerner Publications, has gone on to sell more than two million copies.

Their initial success led the duo to write other books on Hanukkah and Shabbat and later to publish books by other authors that went beyond the didactic and more traditional portrayals of Jewish life and ritual common at the time in children’s books.

Among their titles, in 1985, was “Ima on the Bima: My Mommy is a Rabbi,” by Mindy Avra Portnoy. There were Jewish bookstores that refused to carry the book, recalls Portnoy, one of the first women to be ordained as a Reform rabbi. In an email to JTA, Portnoy described the founders as “prescient, daring, and attuned to the real Jewish world that was out there, looking for new Jewish books.”

Groner and Wikler credit the success of the company in part to a renewed interest, beginning in the 1970s, in ethnic awareness and a new generation of Jewish families who were rediscovering their Jewish identity. “Our books provided them with a tool,” Groner said in a statement.

Kar-Ben was acquired by the Minneapolis-based Lerner publishing in 2001, and Groner and Wikler became editorial directors, editing more than 200 titles.

“In the Jewish book world, they’re really legendary,” said Joni Sussman, publisher of Lerner, who will assume their duties. Kar-Ben has more than 300 titles in print including the popular “Shalom Sesame” series; “Hot Pursuit,” about the civil rights movement; and “Six Million Paper Clips,” which was made into an award-winning movie. Kar-Ben publishes 18 to 20 new titles annually.