CCBC-Net Archives
[CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Kathleen T. Horning <horning>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:32:24 -0500
Leonard, first of all, thanks so much for being our guest for the next two weeks, while we discuss your book "The Minders of the Make Believe." Bouncing off the last paragraph of your response below, could you please tell us a bit more about the "taste makers" -- who they were and how they influenced the field? How much of an influence did they have on the editors you interviewed?
KT
Kathleen T. Horning Director Cooperative Children's Book Center 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park St Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608-263-3721 FAX: 608-262-4933
horning at education.wisc.edu http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
leonardsma at aol.com wrote:
> Well, that's a large question.
>
>
>
> There have been many changes in subject and emotional content, format, and even genre.
>
>
>
> Picture books and cloth and board books for the youngest ages were rare before William R. Scott, a small experimental publishing house inspired by progressive education theory, hired Margaret Wise Brown as its first editor in the late 1930s, and published books like Brown and Leonard Weisgard's NOISY BOOK and Brown and Esphyr Slobodkina's FIVE LITTLE FIREMEN. A few years later, Simon and Schuster brought out Dorothy Kunhardt's PAT THE BUNNY, and a new age category for children's books was firmly established. Think of all the more recent books--those by Eric Carle,Tana Hoban and Lois Ehlert, for instance--that have grown out of that beginning.
>
>
>
> At Harper, Ursula Nordstrom worked across all age groups to deepen the emotional range and pyschological realism of books for young readers. Think of Brown and Hurd's THE RUNAWAY BUNNY, which may be the most rhapsodic piece of writing for young children in the entire literature; or GOODNIGHT MOON, which, as I have written elsewhere, brought together the librarians' idea that make-believe was what small children want and need with the opposing idea of the progressive educators of the time, who believed that preschoolers had a natural affinity for "here and now" stories about their own everyday reality. Brown had a great, synthetic vision -- and was able to make a place in the Great Green Room for both points of v
> iew. The peacefulness in GOODNIGHT MOON Is not just the sense of peace that a child facing the dark needs at the end of the day; it is also a reconciliation of the warring ideas of the "minders" of children's literature of her day.
>
>
>
> Of course books like HARRIET THE SPY and later THE OUTSIDERS and THE CHOCOLATE WAR took the literature into other new terrain. Robert Cormier's agent the late Marilyn Marlow had a very hard time placing THE CHOCOLATE WAR. Even Ursula Nordstrom found it too disturbing, as did Viking's Velma Varner (lots of Vs there!), who had been willing to take a chance of THE OUTSIDERS. Nordstrom also passed on A WRINKLE IN TIME, but she was generally closed to fantasy; tempamentally, the genre did not appeal to her. But 25 other editors rejected L'Engle's book as well, and the ultimate success of that book was instrumental in bringing about a greater openness among American readers to fantasy literature generally. Prior to that, I think the American tradition was fundamentally realist in orientation, a tendency that can be traced back to Puritan New England and fear of the "sporting lie" that made all fiction suspect.
>
>
>
> Louise Seaman Bechtel's essays, which are collected in a book called BOOKS IN SEARCH OF CHILDREN (which Susan Hirschman published during her tenure as head of Macmillan's Dept of Books for Boys and Girls) are well worth reading. Bechtel had one foot in the librarians' camp and the other in that of the progressive educators like Bank Street's=2
> 0founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell. As such she was one of the few figures who bridged the great divide in critical thinking during much of the last century about what was "good" for children to read.
>
>
>
> Having said all this, it's also worth noting at the start that the official taste makers were responsible for relatively few of the children's books that children themselves were most enthusiastic about. When Ursula Nordstrom started in as head of Harper's department in 1940, one of the first things she did was stop at a newsstand and pick up a sampling of the latest comic books. She knew that that's what chidlren were actually reading, and she wanted to learn the secret of those critically shunned publications' great success.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Leonard S. Marcus
>
> 54 Willow Street, #2A
>
> Brooklyn, New York 11201
>
>
>
> tel 718 596-1897
>
> e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
>
> web www.leonardmarcus.com
>
>
>
Received on Thu 17 Jul 2008 11:32:24 AM CDT
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:32:24 -0500
Leonard, first of all, thanks so much for being our guest for the next two weeks, while we discuss your book "The Minders of the Make Believe." Bouncing off the last paragraph of your response below, could you please tell us a bit more about the "taste makers" -- who they were and how they influenced the field? How much of an influence did they have on the editors you interviewed?
KT
Kathleen T. Horning Director Cooperative Children's Book Center 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park St Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608-263-3721 FAX: 608-262-4933
horning at education.wisc.edu http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
leonardsma at aol.com wrote:
> Well, that's a large question.
>
>
>
> There have been many changes in subject and emotional content, format, and even genre.
>
>
>
> Picture books and cloth and board books for the youngest ages were rare before William R. Scott, a small experimental publishing house inspired by progressive education theory, hired Margaret Wise Brown as its first editor in the late 1930s, and published books like Brown and Leonard Weisgard's NOISY BOOK and Brown and Esphyr Slobodkina's FIVE LITTLE FIREMEN. A few years later, Simon and Schuster brought out Dorothy Kunhardt's PAT THE BUNNY, and a new age category for children's books was firmly established. Think of all the more recent books--those by Eric Carle,Tana Hoban and Lois Ehlert, for instance--that have grown out of that beginning.
>
>
>
> At Harper, Ursula Nordstrom worked across all age groups to deepen the emotional range and pyschological realism of books for young readers. Think of Brown and Hurd's THE RUNAWAY BUNNY, which may be the most rhapsodic piece of writing for young children in the entire literature; or GOODNIGHT MOON, which, as I have written elsewhere, brought together the librarians' idea that make-believe was what small children want and need with the opposing idea of the progressive educators of the time, who believed that preschoolers had a natural affinity for "here and now" stories about their own everyday reality. Brown had a great, synthetic vision -- and was able to make a place in the Great Green Room for both points of v
> iew. The peacefulness in GOODNIGHT MOON Is not just the sense of peace that a child facing the dark needs at the end of the day; it is also a reconciliation of the warring ideas of the "minders" of children's literature of her day.
>
>
>
> Of course books like HARRIET THE SPY and later THE OUTSIDERS and THE CHOCOLATE WAR took the literature into other new terrain. Robert Cormier's agent the late Marilyn Marlow had a very hard time placing THE CHOCOLATE WAR. Even Ursula Nordstrom found it too disturbing, as did Viking's Velma Varner (lots of Vs there!), who had been willing to take a chance of THE OUTSIDERS. Nordstrom also passed on A WRINKLE IN TIME, but she was generally closed to fantasy; tempamentally, the genre did not appeal to her. But 25 other editors rejected L'Engle's book as well, and the ultimate success of that book was instrumental in bringing about a greater openness among American readers to fantasy literature generally. Prior to that, I think the American tradition was fundamentally realist in orientation, a tendency that can be traced back to Puritan New England and fear of the "sporting lie" that made all fiction suspect.
>
>
>
> Louise Seaman Bechtel's essays, which are collected in a book called BOOKS IN SEARCH OF CHILDREN (which Susan Hirschman published during her tenure as head of Macmillan's Dept of Books for Boys and Girls) are well worth reading. Bechtel had one foot in the librarians' camp and the other in that of the progressive educators like Bank Street's=2
> 0founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell. As such she was one of the few figures who bridged the great divide in critical thinking during much of the last century about what was "good" for children to read.
>
>
>
> Having said all this, it's also worth noting at the start that the official taste makers were responsible for relatively few of the children's books that children themselves were most enthusiastic about. When Ursula Nordstrom started in as head of Harper's department in 1940, one of the first things she did was stop at a newsstand and pick up a sampling of the latest comic books. She knew that that's what chidlren were actually reading, and she wanted to learn the secret of those critically shunned publications' great success.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Leonard S. Marcus
>
> 54 Willow Street, #2A
>
> Brooklyn, New York 11201
>
>
>
> tel 718 596-1897
>
> e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
>
> web www.leonardmarcus.com
>
>
>
Received on Thu 17 Jul 2008 11:32:24 AM CDT
