From: fran manushkin <franm>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 23:55:24 -0400

I worked for Ursula Nordstrom for many years and reading her letters brings back so many memories. Nina wrote about the highlight of the day being the moment the carbon folder reached our desks. These folders not only contained Ursula's letters but also the letters the rest of the editors wrote their authors. If any of us made a spelling or grammatical error, Ursula corrected it on the carbon. It was mortifying to be corrected, and it certainly made our letters carefully wrought! Ursula wrote with a fountain pen and blue ink, in a very confident, sweeping hand. The initials "UN" in her handwriting were enough to make me shake with nerves. Ursula was charming and extremely quick-witted and sardonic. Her eyes were piercing in a way I've never seen on anyone else, except in photos of Picasso.. I still have dreams about her. She represented to many of us an archetypal mother, nourisher, witch, magus, you name it! Ursula and Charlotte Zolotow were utterly voracious in their appetite for new talent; but this was in a context before publishers were deluged with manuscripts. It was a time when not enough people took children's books seriously and so Ursula and Charlotte were always eager to break new ground with new writers and artists. We kept an incredibly complete record of all unsolicited manuscripts we received. Each ms. received its own 4 by 6 index card and the first reader summarized the plot and wrote her evaluation of the ms. on it. This was then checked by an editor who initialed the card. We had several kinds of rejections: the lowest level was called a rejection. When we rejected a teacher or friend of somebody we typed the rejection. The next level up was something called, a "sorry no, glad to see more," which we sent to authors who we wanted to encourage. Whenever an author sent in her/his next manuscript, the receptionist who opened the mail looked up the file cards on all previous manuscripts and attached them to the new one. Believe it or not, we did not send any manuscripts back during the two weeks before Christmas, so as not to ruin anyone's holiday. Taking this much care required two full-time manuscript readers on staff. Ursula insisted that all ms. be returned by a month. If we got behind, we'd take time out in an afternoon, and have something called a "Blitz," where we stopped doing everything else and read unsolicited manusripts. These days publishers are deluged with thousands and thousands of stories by people who submit stories because they think children's books are "hot," or will make them rich. In the years Ursula worked, the motives of those who submitted stories were "finer," so to speak. It was a great time to work in publishing! Fran Manushkin
Received on Mon 10 Aug 1998 10:55:24 PM CDT