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I found this quote on Shelf Awareness - love that newsletter - and they found it on the blog Brain Pickings, as you will see. (And Brain Pickings got it from a book of Ursula Nordstrom's letters that I now MUST read.)  This is a great answer to all those people who wonder - out loud - why I "still" read children's books.  As my hero might have said, it's what I do.

"I was taken out to luncheon and offered, with great ceremony, the opportunity to be an editor in the adult department. The implication, of course, was that since I had learned to publish books for children with considerable success perhaps I was now ready to move along (or up) to the adult field. I almost pushed the luncheon table into the lap of the pompous gentleman opposite me and then explained kindly that publishing children's books was what I did, that I couldn't possibly be interested in books for dead dull finished adults, and thank you very much but I had to get back to my desk to publish some more good books for bad children."

A book of letters I ought to have included in my ode to epistles and epistolaries the other day: Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom. Miss Nordstrom, the pioneering editor behind Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 to 1973, was something of a genius herself. The list of children’s classics she was responsible for publishing is staggeringly long and awesome: Little Bear, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, Danny and the Dinosaur, Where the Sidewalk ends, Harold and the Purple Crayon, oh and a little thing called Charlotte’s Web—to name a very few.

Dear Genius is a collection of letters she wrote to authors, illustrators, reviewers, even parents and children who had written with responses to her books. She is unfailingly poised, charming, and insightful, even when responding to criticism. And her voice, oh her wonderful voice! Her letters are simply crammed with personality—she is wry, teasing, incisive, direct, and altogether brilliant.

Her editorial letters provide a fascinating look at the history of children’s publishing in America, both on the grand scale of publishing trends and literary vision, and on the micro scale of word choices for a single line of a specific book. For instance, in a 1957 letter to Syd Hoff about Danny and the Dinosaur, an early “I Can Read” book for beginning readers:

I think you should just say “One day Danny went to the museum.” (He didn’t actually want to “see how the world looked a long, long time ago,” as you put it, do you think? Very unchildlike. He might have wanted to go to see the dead mummies, or other specific things in a museum, but I wouldn’t mention that here because you mention it on following pages. So just have a simple statement on this first page. “One day Danny went to the museum.”) It is pretty short and if you can think of one more short sentence for this page by all means add it. I can’t come up with any suggestion myself. Page 8: You’ll have to simplify what he saw on this page. NOT THAT I WANT YOU TO GET SELF-CONSCIOUS ABOUT “I CAN READ.” I told you I wanted you to let me worry about that aspect and that’s all I’m doing now. You could just say “He saw Indians. He saw bears. He saw…” I haven’t been in a museum in 150 years and can’t think of anything else, but you can.

Or, in September 1963:

Maurice, before I sent the paste-up I went through it, rereading the words, and looking at the pictures again. It is MOST MAGNIFICENT, and we’re so proud to have it on our list. When you were much younger, and had done only a couple of books, I remember I used to write you letters when the books were finished, and thank you for “another beautiful” job—or some such dopiness. Now you’re rich and famous and need no words of wonder from me. But I must send them, anyhow, when I look through Where the Wild Things Are. I think it is utterly magnificent, and the words are beautiful and meaningful, and it does just wan

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HarperCollins has revealed the cover and title of a posthumously published Shel Silverstein poetry collection: Everything On It. The publisher will print one million copies of the September release.

Here’s more about the book: “With more than one hundred and thirty never-before-seen poems and drawings completed by the cherished American artist and selected by his family from his archives, this collection will follow in the tradition and format of his acclaimed poetry classics.”

Silverstein passed away in 1999, but his children’s poetry collections (Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic) have a dedicated audience. The poet, illustrator and songwriter hesitated to enter the children’s market until he met the legendary children’s editor Ursula Nordstrom and she convinced him to try.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This past November I spent six action-packed days in Tokyo, lecturing about American picture books at the Japanese National Library and celebrating the November 30th release of the Japanese edition of DEAR GENIUS. What, you say, Ursula Nordstrom has Japanese fans—enough to warrant a full-dress translation of her letters to Maurice Sendak, E. B. White, et. al.? Indeed she does, and a great many of the books she published are beloved by Japanese children today. How did this happen?

Following World War II, Japanese librarians and publishers came to the U.S. to study our advanced methods for connecting children with books. Back home, they created scores of makeshift neighborhood children’s libraries and, to satisfy the growing demand, published a mix of children’s books drawn from foreign and homegrown sources. In time THE CARROT SEED, GOODNIGHT MOON, BEDTIME FOR FRANCES, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, and CHARLOTTE’S WEB—to name just a few of the classics Ursula championed—made their way to Japanese shores. Although Ursula herself was a walking caricature of the anxious, accident-prone traveler and rarely ventured far from New York, the books she was responsible for have circled the globe. Now, so have her letters.

Poster for the exhibition "The Golden Age of the Picture Book: History's Message to Children," in Ueno Park, Tokyo

Visiting Tokyo as the Japanese government’s guest is a very good way to go to Japan. I strongly recommend it! I was picked up at my hotel each morning and driven to a restaurant for lunch with a small party of guests: obento boxes one time, Japanese/French another. Then it was on to the day’s major event: tea and a conversation about digital publishing with the director of the National Library; a talk for the library’s staff about the state of American children’s book publishing and a library tour; a public lecture on the beginnings of the American picture book presented to mark the tenth anniversary of the library’s children’s literature division (which is known as the International Library of Children’s Literature). On view at the library just then was a major exhibition of picture books of the 1920s and 1930s from the United States, Russia, and Western Europe. The exhibition’s subtitle was a beautiful summing-up of why children’s books matter. It called them “History’s Message to Children.” I wish I had thought of that myself! Most of the displayed books came from the private collection of Tayo Shima, a past president of IBBY and a very Ursula Nordstrom-like figure herself—a shape-shifter and

Sarah's talked this week about herself, her cats, her book, maps, and biscuits and bacon. Before saying toodle-oo today, because editors are such an important part of the book-making process, she wanted to share her thoughts about Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary director of the HarperCollins children's books division from 1940 to 1973.

I didn't really understand what book editors do, or how they feel about their work, until my own editor sent me Dear Genius, which is a book of letters from Ursula Nordstrom to many of the authors she worked with, including E.B. White, Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak, M.E. Kerr, Russell and Lillian Hoban, etc, etc, etc. UN had her hand in so many of the best-loved children's books published during those years; she had a vision, and she stuck to it.

The book was a revelation, really. Publishing is big business, right? HarperCollins, as far as I know, is owned by a huge multinational corporation. And we writers are aware of the tension between the business and the book. We love our own books, and we worry about whether they're going to sell well enough to make our publisher happy. This tension is nothing new; UN felt it, and referred angrily at the end of her career to "those tiny, tiny persons who live on the well-known bottom line."

As director, UN had to be aware of the bottom line, but she quite often fell in love with a book or with a piece of artwork. "There are a lot of us in publishing," she said, "who are just as romantic, or perhaps more romantic, about books than many of the authors and artists." Reading a book sent to her by one of her authors, she describes herself: "I sit here in shimmering happiness over such a lovely manuscript."

Once an author or artist was 'hers,' she became his or her champion. She discovered Maurice Sendak when he was designing shop windows at FAO Schwartz! She defended his controversial In the Night Kitchen (in the pictures, the little boy is naked) against prudish readers who wanted to censor the book and described one of her responses as leaving 'blood all over the keyboard.' She describes herself as "one who has fought, bled, and practically died to do good books whether or not they were going to be immediately profitable."

Sometimes her 'geniuses' didn't produce the work they were contracted to do. UN was a master of gentle flattering persuasion—dear genius, the world needs your beautiful book! As deadlines pass, she prods gently, and sometimes with dramatic desperation. Kay Thompson was supposed to do another Eloise book for Harper, but she didn't turn the book in on time, and stopped answering letters or phone calls. UN wrote, "I wonder if I'm dead and I don't realize it, and that's why you can't get in touch with me." And Edward Gorey made her nuts! After repeated delays, she said she hoped Harper could publish the book "before a truck knocks me down and kills me."

She was passionate about her books and her artists and authors. And I think that tradition in publishing is still alive. Editors still buy books because they fall in love with them. Thanks to them, readers can find books that they, too, can fall in love with.

Have you ever read a book that made you feel "shimmering happiness"? I bet its editor felt that way, too.


We'll leave you pondering that question while we thank Sarah for her enlightening post on editors and for a divine debut week. Best of luck, Sarah!

P.S. Everyone be sure to check our HarperCollins's new website for THE MAGIC THIEF, it just launched.

I recently had the immense pleasure of chatting with historian and author Leonard Marcus about his newly published title, Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature (Houghton Mifflin Co.) Over fourteen years in the making, Minders of Make-Believe tells the fascinating story of the development of children’s literature in America from its earliest beginnings to the advent of Harry Potter and beyond.

Do you know the full history of how Children’s Book Week came to be? Or who Leonard would put his money on in a battle of wills between New York Public Library’s trailblazing librarian Anne Carroll Moore and Harper’s Editor Beyond Compare, Ursula Nordstrom? (True confession: they both scare me a little.) Listen to the inside story of the events and characters that shaped the classics using the link below!

And, if you plan to be in the Washington DC area on June 19th, don’t miss Leonard’s upcoming talk and book signing at Politics and Prose!

Happy Children’s Book Week!

P.S. Have a favorite author or other publishing figure you’d like to see featured in a First Book podcast? Feel free to email us with your suggestions!

When you learn about the sordid past of children's book publishing you learn about the epic battles waged between the Queen of Harper Collins, Ms. Ursula Nordstrom, and the Empress of New York Public Library, Ms. Anne Carroll Moore. Both are dead and gone and, by rights and association, I am bound to the Moore perspective. However, I was just amazed by a bit of gossip Roger was able to wrangle up regarding Anne Carroll Moore, the Newbery, and a connection to Viking that may have been less than on the up-and-up. Woooo! Sordid tidbits!