On imagination, comfort zones, and how to stand up to mediocre ladies in influential positions.
As a lover of children’s books, I adore legendary children’s book editor Ursula Nordstrom (1910-1988), who headed Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 to 1973. Credited with such timeless classics as Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon (1947), E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1951), Maurice Sendak’sWhere The Wild Things Are (1963), and Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (1964), she is often considered the single most influential champion of innovation in children’s book publishing in the past century, whose vision reined in a new era of imagination of literature for little ones.
Recently, my friends from Enchanted Lion Books, the lovely indie children’spublishing house up the street from me, resurfaced a wonderful gem from Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, one of my 5 favorite collections of famous correspondence. Dated March 4, 1953, this fascinating, heartfelt, and amusing letter to Dutch author and Maurice Sendak collaborator Meindert Dejong captures both the remarkable conviction with which Nordstrom approached children’s literature and the dangers that plagued, and continue to plague, truly visionary publishing………..
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/06/ursula-nordstrom-letter/
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