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Article Excerpt
Between 1995 and 1997, as I culled the more than 100,000 letters in Ursula Nordstrom's editorial files for the representative selection that became Dear Genius, I also sought out the people Nordstrom worked with during her thirty-three-year tenure as director of Harper's Department of Books for Boys and Girls. I interviewed a great many of her authors and artists as well as several of the staffers with whom she shared her professional life. What follows, on the occasion of Dear Genius's tenth anniversary, is a portrait of the visionary editor of "good books for bad children," constructed from thirteen of those interviews.
Meeting Ursula
MARY STOLZ: The first time I saw her, it was in 1949, after I had sent a manuscript called To Tell Your Love to Harper. Months passed, and I forgot about it. Then Ursula phoned me and told me I had written a "teenage book," invited me down to her office, and accepted the book. She had just one assistant then. She told me later that she thought I had been quite cool for someone who had had her first book taken by the first publisher who had seen it. In fact, I had been far from calm. When I left her office, I walked up to Grand Central, got on the train, and then suddenly remembered that I had driven my car into the city. I had to get off at 125th Street and go all the way back downtown and get my car. I was in a total daze.
She was a bit plump and she had a wonderful intelligent face that was kind but not in the least bit sweet. She had spectacles and these marvelous blue eyes looking out at you. She had great legs. She had a very low, precise, musical voice.
KARLA KUSKIN: In 1955 I had done a children's book as a student at Yale, and my teacher told me that I ought to sell it. I went to Harper to discuss freelance design work and decided to go to the children's book department, too. Ursula wasn't in that day. I think I gave my book to Susan Carr [later Hirschman]. Then there were phone calls back and forth, and at some point I went and met Ursula. Ursula seemed old and intimidating, always dressed in a suit or dress, and with her hair done up in one of those hairdos that I can't imagine anybody getting involved in any more. But she could be the most charming person, and I quickly got to like her because I saw that she could be funny and I could be funny.
ANN TOBIAS: Right after college in 1957 I was hired to be a secretary to an editor who did novel-length nonfiction books on such subjects as car racing and the space program. They looked deadly to me. But it seemed like a small department where there was opportunity. After three months, the manuscript reader left to have a baby, and I was offered that job. I think there were six of us then. Susan Hirschman was the assistant editor when I arrived.
Ursula was always very guarded with me. I knew that she was a brilliant woman. I was in awe of her and found it difficult to be relaxed in a conversation with her. I wanted to, desperately.
BARBARA DICKS: I started at Harper in 1957, the year of Little Bear. I had worked in publishing in England, for Victor Gollancz, who was quite a presence, and when he knew I was coming here he said the house to aim for was Harper because it had the greatest integrity. Off I trotted, and I really did the rounds. Finally, I was offered a job in Harper's religious department. Then three months later a job came up in the children's department, and I met Ursula. We had a little chat, and I made it clear I didn't know anything about children's books. I remember she was wearing a purple dress and she said, "I'm willing to give you a week's trial." I did one letter for her and I think she liked my initials, which are "B.A.D.," and the week's trial went out of the window, and there I was.
Ursula was a presence, too. From what I had heard, she was to be admired and she was to be feared. She would put the authors in front of everything else. If it was an author's word against an editor's, she would take the author's side every time. The authors were to be protected.
ZENA SUTHERLAND: I first met Ursula when I was not a young person but young as a reviewer. This was around 1958. I came to New York having been told that this would be a good thing to do. I didn't have that much time, and I was totally unaware that you can't just walk into an editor's office and expect her or him to see you. So I had already seen two editors who had been polite but not exactly enthralled to have me interrupt their busy schedules when I walked into the children's section at Harper and the receptionist dialed Ursula. I could hear Ursula's voice saying, "Oh, not another one!"--that is, another visitor. But I waited, not for long, and I was ushered in. I had no prior expectation of what Ursula would look like, so I have no idea why I was surprised, but I was surprised....
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