From: ajohnston_at_harcourt.com <ajohnston>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:58:25 -0700

Being the editor of Our Family Tree was one of the great privileges of my career. I knew as soon as Lisa Westberg Peters's manuscript arrived on my desk that I was in the presence of something extremely special. Even now, every time I read it, the gentle bedtime-story rhythm floors me, the ending gives me goosebumps, and the way Lauren Stringer brought the whole thing to visual life--astonishing!

Two stories from the process might be of interest:

Whenever the art for a picture book arrives here at Harcourt Children's Books, we lay it all out on a large conference-room table and invite everyone in-house to come see it. Designers, marketing people, managing editors, subsidiary rights folks, the president of the company, the people in human resources--you name it. When we had the Our Family Tree art show, everyone was thrilled with Lauren's paintings. It was a real love?st of celebratory exclamations and back-patting as we all imagined how proud we were going to be to publish this incredible and important book.

Then a woman in our special sales department walked up to the piece that accompanies this line: "On the outside, we were squishy and soft, like worms." She stood there staring at it for a moment, and then she announced, "I don't know about you, but *I'm* not related to worms!"

---
Later, when we were putting the finishing touches on the cover, someone had
the brilliant idea of seeing if we could get a quote from Dr. Ernst Mayr,
Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Harvard and esteemed evolutionary
biologist.  At the time he was in his late nineties (he's since died), and
I really didn't think he'd even be able to write back to me, let alone
provide a blurb.  But then one day about a month later, a handwritten
letter arrived with the following quote included:
"Evolution is what has created the living world and what keeps it going.
If we do not understand evolution, we will never understand our world.	How
lucky our children are to have this beautiful and moving guide from which
to learn!"
But perhaps even more inspiring were his words about the importance of
publishing books like this for children that deliver scientific information
in the form of stories.  The other side is winning the battle mainly
because they have better stories, he said, and if we are going to gain any
ground in this area at all, we need to have as many great ones as
possible--ones that are equally compelling and dramatic.
So here's to all of us continuing to do everything we can to figure out how
to create those stories and get them out to our children everywhere!
Allyn M. Johnston
Editor in Chief
Harcourt Children's Books
ajohnston at harcourt.com

Received on Fri 15 Jul 2005 04:58:25 PM CDT