Charlotte’s Mother

To those working in the world of children’s book publishing during the 1960s and ‘70s, the platonic ideal among its top editors was Ursula Nordstrom, director of Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 until her retirement in 1973. Happily, “Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom,” collected, edited and provided with helpful footnotes by the critic and biographer Leonard Marcus, will only enhance a reputation already bordering on legend.

These admirable, often moving selections from Nordstrom’s professional correspondence (some 300 letters out of thousands perused by Marcus) were all typed by the great lady herself during spontaneous moments of cajolery, cheerleading, critical acuity, empathy, enthusiasm, euphoria, insight and, on rare occasions, discouragement. Their generosity of spirit (as well as of editorial time), their humor and sound judgment, can only enhance a reputation already bordering on legend.

As ducks take to water, so Nordstrom embraced the medium of the informal letter to express her uncensored feelings, her first unguarded responses to a manuscript, to artwork, to a new idea, to an author’s or librarian’s complaint. Sometimes the briefest of notes, at other times three or four pages dashed off in the white heat of inspiration, these are not the work of a careful craftsman or epistolary stylist. There are often words repeated, occasional misspellings and lapses into cliche (which she unfailingly notices and passes off with an embarrassed “you should forgive the originality of my prose style”), but the overall content is always heartfelt and makes for compelling reading. She had that rare gift of making each recipient of one of her missives feel like the most important person in her life.

From the beginning of her career, Nordstrom understood that talent (a.k.a. genius) was a commodity like no other, one that would repay whatever tender nurturing, encouragement and respect she could offer. To UN, as she was known to all at Harper’s, there was nothing sadder than an innate gift unfulfilled. She looked upon family life as a decided impediment to creativity and confided to author Janette Sebring Lowrey in 1965: “[A]ny children or indeed any relatives--husbands, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters who are connected in any way with ‘my’ authors are MY ENEMIES.” Three years later, she exhorts Mary Rodgers: “Bless you, dear author, take care of your health, forget children and husband . . . and WORK ON THIS MANUSCRIPT.” To picture-book writer Ruth Krauss, she confides: “As I tried to say last Thursday, I honestly have such a real reverence for creative talent that I am willing to do anything for anyone who possesses it.”

Among the countless beneficiaries of this editorial bounty were the authors-artists Maurice Sendak and John Steptoe. Nordstrom discovered the 22-year-old Sendak working in the window display department at F.A.O. Schwarz. On the basis of his sketchbook, she gave him his first assignment as a children’s book illustrator, producing the drawings for Marcel Ayme’s “The Wonderful Farm.” Their relationship grew through the years; she guided his career like a doting parent. In a birthday greeting to the artist in 1955, she closes with “As I have said to you other years, I am very glad you got born.” Planning to meet her young protege at a regional meeting of librarians in Swampscott, Mass., one autumn, she cautions “bring a sweater as the hotel is right on the ocean and it may be coldish to walk by the sea.”

When the artist had completed a work for which he did both the pictures and the words, Nordstrom exulted: “It is MOST MAGNIFICENT, and we’re so proud to have it on our list. When you were much younger, 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. . . . your beautiful book is exhilirating [sic] and it reminds me that I love creative people and love to publish books for creative children.” Later, about to retire, Nordstrom writes him: “I know how privileged I am to hear about what is going on in your head. It has been and is the greatest happiness of my professional life.”

With the gifted African American artist Steptoe, the relationship was more rocky, and her letters to him are the most poignant in the collection. Steptoe was still a high school student when Nordstrom first saw his paintings and urged him to try writing about something he knew well: growing up in Harlem. After their first meeting she writes to him “[N]ever forget that what you told me is something ONLY YOU know about, no one else knows just what you know about anything. And that’s why it will be so important for you to put down your thoughts and emotions.” When, four months later, Steptoe brings her a handwritten manuscript, it is Nordstrom herself who types up the draft and mails him a copy. Ever so gently, she suggests that he “see if there are not places where you would like to tell a little more. . . . Once again, John, I am not interested in any single thing but what is IN YOUR HEAD. . . . I have the greatest respect for you as an artist, young as you are. I know you know what you want to do and all I want to do is recognize it when you have done it.” When the manuscript of Steptoe’s first book, “Stevie,” is not quite done almost a year later, Nordstrom writes encouragingly: “You are tremendously talented and the world is never an easy place for a person as talented as you are. But you know your work is IMPORTANT.”

“Stevie,” written by Steptoe in nonstandard English, was published to great acclaim in 1969, when the artist was 18. Two other works followed, but Steptoe was uncertain of his direction, uncomfortable in the downtown, genteel world of publishing and stalked by a drug problem. He began pointedly to ignore Nordstrom’s efforts to reach him. In a letter to Steptoe’s stepmother, written in late 1970, she writes: “He is a perfectly wonderful person. I think he is very cynical about me, I can’t help being white, and I suppose he can’t help not liking me. But I truly love him. I love his talent, but I love him as a person, too.

Not all of Nordstrom’s letters were to the star performers on the Harper’s list. To the author of a first picture book who was having trouble getting started on a second, she writes encouragingly: “You are a terrific person, with vitality and creative energy and there isn’t the slightest chance in the whole world that you are not going to write many many many wonderful books. So try to get through this frustrating time without becoming discouraged. I can absolutely promise you that you will do your next book sooner rather than later and that it will be good.”

To a Harper’s salesman who hoped Nordstrom would encourage Ruth Krauss to do a sequel to “A Hole Is to Dig,” because it had sold so well, she scolds: “She doesn’t do the same thing over and over again and if she ever starts she won’t continue to be Ruth Krauss.”

She could be funny, as in this note to Edward Gorey, who had just sent yet another excuse for not delivering a long-overdue manuscript: “Thanks for your card telling me you are having a nervous breakdown. Welcome to the club. I think you know that I have His and Her straitjackets hanging in my office. Come down and slip into one and we can have a good talk.”

Some of her best letters were written to those parents or librarians who had the responsibility of choosing books for children. To an irate school librarian who confesses to having burned a copy of Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” because of the frontal-nude picture of its young hero, Mickey, she muses: “Should not those of us who stand between the creative artist and the child be very careful not to sift our reactions to such books through our own adult prejudices and neuroses? To me as editor and publisher of books for children, that is one of my greatest and most difficult duties. . . . I think young children will always react with delight to such a book as ‘In the Night Kitchen,’ and that they will react creatively and wholesomely. It is only adults who ever feel threatened by Sendak’s work.”

Though she would, on occasion, refer deprecatingly to her department at Harper’s as “the Tot Dept.” or “kiddie box,” she had no patience with those who condescended to children, their books or those who wrote and illustrated their books. To Isaac Bashevis Singer, who was collaborating with Sendak on the collection “Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories,” she wrote: “You’ve wondered why Sendak didn’t do adult books. And once you asked me if I wouldn’t rather be an editor of adult books. But most adults are dead and beyond hope after the age of thirty, and I think with ‘Zlateh’ you will find a new and marvelous audience.” To Louise Fitzhugh, the author of “Harriet the Spy,” she once exclaimed, “Thank God for anyone under 12 years of age.”

During the last years of her association with Harper’s, Nordstrom worried about the future of picture books in particular. Production costs of full-color printing had risen drastically. At the same time, publishing was becoming far more competitive and cost conscious, and the role of the marketing director was beginning to rival that of the editorial director. The once leisurely climate in which new talent could be nurtured, even cossetted, was no longer there. Nordstrom wrote wistfully to an old friend and author, “I’m glad I had the chance to take chances when to do a picture book in color didn’t cost a fortune.”

On the day--Feb. 16, 1973--that she retired as director of Harper’s Junior Book Department, Nordstrom wrote movingly to a child who had written to say how sad it was that E. B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” had to end with Charlotte’s death: “Your letter about Charlotte’s death has come to me because I published the book, ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ When I read the manuscript I felt exactly the way you now feel. I didn’t want Charlotte to die, and I too cried over her death. What I think you and I both should keep in mind is that Charlotte had a good and worthwhile life. . . . And something to be glad about is that she had all those children. I think the author knows that in due course a spider such as Charlotte does die, but her children live, and so will her children’s children.”

Ursula Nordstrom died in 1988, but her children--like Charlotte’s--live on: “A Hole Is to Dig,” “Goodnight Moon,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Harriet the Spy,” “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” “Little Bear,” “Stuart Little” and others. As Charlotte herself might have put it, “Some editor!”