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[CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
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From: leonardsma at aol.com <leonardsma>
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:05:21 -0400
There is also the International Children's Digital Library (www.icdl.org), now administered by the U. of Maryland, which has hundreds of picture books from around the world available for online viewing in their entirety. I recently looked at the portion of the ICDL site devoted to picture books from Africa and found about 45 books. It's not the ideal way of looking at a picture book, but it does give a window onto what is being published elsewhere. And I do think that the tone I spoke about before can change, and that publishers, who are more often reactive than proactive, would respond.
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
-----Original Message-----
From: Bookmarch <bookmarch at aol.com>
To: leonardsma <leonardsma at aol.com>; mayra.negron at gmail.com; ayg at comcast.net
Cc: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 9:50 am
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
To be fair, the decline in popularity?of children's books from other countries is exactly matched by a similar decline in adult books. I recall a study of bestseller lists from a few years ago that compared the former popularity of French, German,? -- and later Central European, Latin American, and finally Indian authors with the current A list of American fiction and nonfiction. Parents who feel no need to read books in translation or from other countries are, of course, less likely to believe their children need that experience. That said, there are some efforts CCBCers should know about: http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?is a very active and lively organization. Every year PEN hosts a World Voices festival in New York, and they have a section devoted to books for younger readers. http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1096? PEN does an especially good job at bringing these authors from around the world into schools to meet kids. And if we expand our sense of literature to inc
lude, say, Manga, there are some kinds of foreign books that are more popular and influential in America than ever before.
?
Marc Aronson
?
www.marcaronson.com
bookmarch at aol.com
973-763-9343 (phone)
973-763-6601 (fax)
917-257-7072 (cell)
?
?
In a message dated 07/18/08 09:32:03 Eastern Daylight Time, leonardsma writes:
At the Bologna International Book Fair earlier this year, US publishers were selling foreign rights far more often than they were buying them. I've heard it said that one reason for this is that publishers here think there is an advantage to having the authors they publish on hand to help promote their books. The sense of the market of Barnes and Noble's buyers is most likely another major factor in publishers' decisions on this score. I also think that the nation's leaders set a tone that can have reverberations throughout the culture, and that in the last several years we've obviously seen a wholesale turning away from interest in the rest of the world. Wedo have Kane-Miller, a small publishing company that has been going now for something like thirty years, which specializes in importing picture books from around the world. But for now they're unique on the US publishing scene.
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
-----Original Message-----
From: Mayra Negron <mayra.negron at gmail.com>
To: Annette Goldsmith <ayg at comcast.net>
Cc: leonardsma at aol.com; horning at education.wisc.edu; ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:31 pm
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
?
? ?
Having just attended tonight a round table with 7 renowned Chilean (IBBY) authors who are writing (and have written)? excellent children's books, I am saddened that their work is not as known in the US. Listening to Victor Carvajal, Veronica Uribe, Alicia Morel, and others describe the books they have authored, makes me think of all the Spanish-speaking children that are missing these authors' work because the bridges from the North and South Americas are non-existent right now. How many children that can read Carvajal and his ecological stories are not doing so because the adults in their lives don't know that this literature exists? As I told Victor Carvajal tonight, our group, a Fullbright group of teachers and librarians studying Chilean literature,? is beginning to build the bridge. I hope others will join us.
?
Mayra, counting the hours until tomorrow, when we get to listen to 8 more authors,
Santiago, Chile
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Annette Goldsmith <ayg at comcast.net> wrote:
?Leonard, could you comment on how children's book editors view
?internationalism today? Jella Lepman and the generation that created IBBY
?had the impetus of post-war reconstruction to build bridges of understanding
?through children's books; what do you think drives the movement now? I'm
?thinking in particular of books from other countries, especially those
?translated into English for the U.S. market, rather than multicultural books
?originating with U.S. houses.
?
?Annette Goldsmith
?Doctoral Candidate
?College of Information
?Florida State University
?Tallahassee, Florida
?
?-----Original Message-----
?From: ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
?[mailto:ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu] On Behalf Of
?leonardsma at aol.com
?Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:03 PM
?To: horning at education.wisc.edu; ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
?Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
?
??Moore was many things, and it's important to recognize all of them. I agree
?that she is an easy target for satire, and also that her accomplishments
?were great, not least when you consider the resistance she had to overcome
?from publishers, librarian management, just about everyone... As for her
?interest in what we now call multi-culturalism, yes this was important to
?her. She was a realist about the fact that New York City was an
?international crossroads and a magnet for immigrants and her realism
?expressed itself at the library both in the collections she organized, which
?included books in many languages and from many "lands," as they said in
?those days, and in the staffing of the library. After World War II, NYPL was
?one of the libraries to which Japan sent young women to train as children's
?librarians with a view to returning home to aid in the cultural
?reconstruction of their devastated homeland.
?
?
?
?As I say in MINDERS, May Massee was another internationalist, who published
?many books with foreign settings and about foreign cultures. She did so with
?the stated purpose of opening American children's minds to an awareness of
?the rest of the world, and she did so within a few years of America's
?rejection of membership in the League of Nations, and of the Red Scare--so
?it wasn't an easy position for her to be taking.
?
?
?
?Margaret McElderry worked for Anne Carroll Moore in Rm 105, the inner
?sanctum of NYPL, in the years before World War II. When McElderry returned
?from military service in Office of Army Intelligence in Europe, she became
?Harcourt, Brace's children's book editor, and took up the cause of
?internationalism on an even grander scale. Hers was the generation that
?created IBBY and the one that perhaps has believed most fervently that
?children's books could make a difference in the quest of lasting world
?peace. Velma Varner came on to the scene at about the same time, first at
?Putnam and later at other houses, including Viking, and she too was an
?internationalist. Ann Beneduce, who later founded Philomel was her protegee.
?So, it's possible to trace this line of editors who a commitment to
?internationalist right up to the present day.
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?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
?
?
?
?
?-----Original Message-----
?
?From: Kathleen T. Horning <horning at education.wisc.edu>
?
?To: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
?
?Sent: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 3:07 pm
?
?Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
?
?
?
?
? ? ?Leonard, thanks for your quick and thoughtful response. ?I can see why
?Anne Carroll Moore may have been viewed as a sentimentalist and
?romanticist when it cames to children's literature, and people do love ? to
?talk about her eccentricities, such as her constant companion, a ? wooden
?doll named Nicholas, whom she treated like a real person. But I ? do think
?we also have to give credit to ACM for her understanding of the ? importance
?of honoring ethnic diversity, rather than pushing for ? assimilation. She
?was very well aware of all the different cultural ? identities represented
?in NYC neighborhoods, and made sure that her ? children's librarians
?understood and celebrated the communities they ? served. ? ?My children's
?literature professor, Gertrude Herman, worked as a ? children's librarian
?under ACM in the New York Public Library System, ? and I loved getting her
?to tell stories about that time. She worked in a ? Czech neighborhood, and,
?as a result, had to learn ev
??erything she could ? about Czech culture. She said after a few years at
?NYPL, she knew more ? about the Czech people than she did about her own
?cultural heritage. ? ? I've always wondered if ACM's great affinity for
?cultural diversity is, ? at least in part, what led to the publication of so
?many novels set in ? other countries during from the late 1920s through the
?1950s. Did that ? come up at all in your research? ? ?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: ?>
?>From the beginnings of library service to children at the turn of the ? >
?last century, public librarians emerged as the leading arbitors of ? >
?quality in children's literature. Anne Carroll was certainly the best ? >
?known member of the group, and quite powerful, but she wa
??s not ? > all-powerful. She had a rival just across the East Rive
?
?r in Clara ? > Whitehill Hunt, who headed children's services at the
?Brooklyn Public ? > Library system starting in 1903, which was three
?years before ACM went ? > to New York Public. In fact, Moore left her
?position at the Pratt ? > demonstration library when she saw that Hunt
?was about to trump her in ? > Brooklyn. Moore was right to realize that
?the NYPL, with its proximity ? > to publishers' offices, was the biggest
?prize of all, and she seized ? > that opportunity when it came her way
?and made the most of it. From ? > then on Moore was involved in
?everything: the establishment of Book ? > Week and of the Newbery and
?Caldecott Medals (though it was Hunt who ? > served as the first Newbery
?chair), the publication of her own annual ? > lists, review work for the
?Herald Tribune and the Horn Book, and less ? > formally as an advisor to
?publishers. There are letters from the ? > D'Aulaires both to Moore and
?Hunt thanking each of them for
??having ? > been the one librarian to inspire them to begin making
?picture books. ? > They must have been a very politic pair. ?> ?>
?Some publishers listened to Moore and others didn't. May Massee, a ? >
?former librarian and Booklist editor when she founded Doublday's ? >
?juveniles dept in the early 1920s, allied herself closely with Moore. ? >
?Later when Massee moved to Viking she published Ruth Sawyer (winner of
?> the Newbery for ROLLER SKATES), who was a good friend of Moore's and a
?> sometime storyteller at NY Public. It certainly helped the young ? >
?Robert McCloskey to win the approval of Moore that he was Sawyer's ? >
?son-in-law, and that his wife was herself a children's librarian. ?>
?> Louise Bechtel of Macmillan was politic but as often as not scornful
?> Moore's opinions. Bechtel published Lewis Hines' photo essay MEN AT
?> WORK, knowing in advance (one can assume) that Moore would dismiss the
?> book as Bank
??Street-inspired here and now realism (it's a book of ? > photos t
?
?hat follows the construction of the Empire State Building, and ? > has
?since won a place as a classic of documentary photography). Ursula ? >
?Nordstrom, who belonged to the next generation of editors, was more ? >
?openly contemptuous of Moore. ?> ?> But Moore as I said was not the
?only powerful librarian. Alice Jordan, ? > at Boston Public Library,
?tutored the founder of The Horn Book in ? > children's literature when
?the latter was just starting out as the ? > proprietor of a children's
?bookshop built on reformist ideals. And ? > Jordan was far more
?responsive to the kinds of experimental books that ? > Margaret Wise
?Brown was writing than Moore was, so there was a range ? > of critical
?opinon, even at the time when a few powerful voices ? > dominated the
?scene. ?> ?> From the 1920s onward, progressive educators led by Bank
?Street's Lucy ? > Mitchell put themselves forward as minders with a
?different philosophy ? > frp, that of
? ?Moore, whom they viewed as a sentimentalist and Romantic ? > about
?childhood. Alice Dalgliesh, who founded the Scribner juvenile ? >
?department in the mid-1930s, came from Teachers College, Columbia ? >
?University, which was another center of progressive education thought ? >
?and practice, and so was not likely to fall into line unquestioning ? >
?with Moore's pronouncements, either. ?> ?> In the 1940s the creators
?of Golden Books found a way to bypass the ? > library system altogether
?by publishing inexpensive books that parents ? > could buy directly at
?five and dime stores, drug stores, and later ? > supermarkets. The
?editors craved the respectibility that library ? > approval could confer
?on a publishing enterprise, and when they had ? > the chance to persuade
?a Caldecott winning artist (for instance ? > Elizabeth Orton Jones) to
?work for them, they did so. But the great ? > success of Golden Books in
?the middle decades of the 19
??00s is perhaps ? > the best proof of all of the limits of the lib
?
?rarians' power as "minders." ?> ?> 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 ?> ?>
?-----Original Message----- ?> From: Kathleen T. Horning
?<horning at education.wisc.edu> ?> To:
?ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu ?> Sent: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:32 pm
?> Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers ?>
?> 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
?<mailto:horning at education.wisc.edu>;
?http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ ?> ? ? ? ? leonardsma at aol.com
?<mailto: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 real ?> ?> ism
?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 a
??t 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
?or
??ientation, a tendency that can be traced back to ? Puritan New Engla
?
?nd 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 Boo ?> ?>
?ks 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 departmen
??t 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
?<mailto:leonardsma at aol.com>; ? ?> ?> web www.leonardmarcus.com
?<http://www.leonardmarcus.com>; ?> ?> ?>
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Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:05:21 -0400
There is also the International Children's Digital Library (www.icdl.org), now administered by the U. of Maryland, which has hundreds of picture books from around the world available for online viewing in their entirety. I recently looked at the portion of the ICDL site devoted to picture books from Africa and found about 45 books. It's not the ideal way of looking at a picture book, but it does give a window onto what is being published elsewhere. And I do think that the tone I spoke about before can change, and that publishers, who are more often reactive than proactive, would respond.
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
-----Original Message-----
From: Bookmarch <bookmarch at aol.com>
To: leonardsma <leonardsma at aol.com>; mayra.negron at gmail.com; ayg at comcast.net
Cc: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 9:50 am
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
To be fair, the decline in popularity?of children's books from other countries is exactly matched by a similar decline in adult books. I recall a study of bestseller lists from a few years ago that compared the former popularity of French, German,? -- and later Central European, Latin American, and finally Indian authors with the current A list of American fiction and nonfiction. Parents who feel no need to read books in translation or from other countries are, of course, less likely to believe their children need that experience. That said, there are some efforts CCBCers should know about: http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?is a very active and lively organization. Every year PEN hosts a World Voices festival in New York, and they have a section devoted to books for younger readers. http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1096? PEN does an especially good job at bringing these authors from around the world into schools to meet kids. And if we expand our sense of literature to inc
lude, say, Manga, there are some kinds of foreign books that are more popular and influential in America than ever before.
?
Marc Aronson
?
www.marcaronson.com
bookmarch at aol.com
973-763-9343 (phone)
973-763-6601 (fax)
917-257-7072 (cell)
?
?
In a message dated 07/18/08 09:32:03 Eastern Daylight Time, leonardsma writes:
At the Bologna International Book Fair earlier this year, US publishers were selling foreign rights far more often than they were buying them. I've heard it said that one reason for this is that publishers here think there is an advantage to having the authors they publish on hand to help promote their books. The sense of the market of Barnes and Noble's buyers is most likely another major factor in publishers' decisions on this score. I also think that the nation's leaders set a tone that can have reverberations throughout the culture, and that in the last several years we've obviously seen a wholesale turning away from interest in the rest of the world. Wedo have Kane-Miller, a small publishing company that has been going now for something like thirty years, which specializes in importing picture books from around the world. But for now they're unique on the US publishing scene.
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
-----Original Message-----
From: Mayra Negron <mayra.negron at gmail.com>
To: Annette Goldsmith <ayg at comcast.net>
Cc: leonardsma at aol.com; horning at education.wisc.edu; ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:31 pm
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
?
? ?
Having just attended tonight a round table with 7 renowned Chilean (IBBY) authors who are writing (and have written)? excellent children's books, I am saddened that their work is not as known in the US. Listening to Victor Carvajal, Veronica Uribe, Alicia Morel, and others describe the books they have authored, makes me think of all the Spanish-speaking children that are missing these authors' work because the bridges from the North and South Americas are non-existent right now. How many children that can read Carvajal and his ecological stories are not doing so because the adults in their lives don't know that this literature exists? As I told Victor Carvajal tonight, our group, a Fullbright group of teachers and librarians studying Chilean literature,? is beginning to build the bridge. I hope others will join us.
?
Mayra, counting the hours until tomorrow, when we get to listen to 8 more authors,
Santiago, Chile
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Annette Goldsmith <ayg at comcast.net> wrote:
?Leonard, could you comment on how children's book editors view
?internationalism today? Jella Lepman and the generation that created IBBY
?had the impetus of post-war reconstruction to build bridges of understanding
?through children's books; what do you think drives the movement now? I'm
?thinking in particular of books from other countries, especially those
?translated into English for the U.S. market, rather than multicultural books
?originating with U.S. houses.
?
?Annette Goldsmith
?Doctoral Candidate
?College of Information
?Florida State University
?Tallahassee, Florida
?
?-----Original Message-----
?From: ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
?[mailto:ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu] On Behalf Of
?leonardsma at aol.com
?Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:03 PM
?To: horning at education.wisc.edu; ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
?Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
?
??Moore was many things, and it's important to recognize all of them. I agree
?that she is an easy target for satire, and also that her accomplishments
?were great, not least when you consider the resistance she had to overcome
?from publishers, librarian management, just about everyone... As for her
?interest in what we now call multi-culturalism, yes this was important to
?her. She was a realist about the fact that New York City was an
?international crossroads and a magnet for immigrants and her realism
?expressed itself at the library both in the collections she organized, which
?included books in many languages and from many "lands," as they said in
?those days, and in the staffing of the library. After World War II, NYPL was
?one of the libraries to which Japan sent young women to train as children's
?librarians with a view to returning home to aid in the cultural
?reconstruction of their devastated homeland.
?
?
?
?As I say in MINDERS, May Massee was another internationalist, who published
?many books with foreign settings and about foreign cultures. She did so with
?the stated purpose of opening American children's minds to an awareness of
?the rest of the world, and she did so within a few years of America's
?rejection of membership in the League of Nations, and of the Red Scare--so
?it wasn't an easy position for her to be taking.
?
?
?
?Margaret McElderry worked for Anne Carroll Moore in Rm 105, the inner
?sanctum of NYPL, in the years before World War II. When McElderry returned
?from military service in Office of Army Intelligence in Europe, she became
?Harcourt, Brace's children's book editor, and took up the cause of
?internationalism on an even grander scale. Hers was the generation that
?created IBBY and the one that perhaps has believed most fervently that
?children's books could make a difference in the quest of lasting world
?peace. Velma Varner came on to the scene at about the same time, first at
?Putnam and later at other houses, including Viking, and she too was an
?internationalist. Ann Beneduce, who later founded Philomel was her protegee.
?So, it's possible to trace this line of editors who a commitment to
?internationalist right up to the present day.
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?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
?
?
?
?
?-----Original Message-----
?
?From: Kathleen T. Horning <horning at education.wisc.edu>
?
?To: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
?
?Sent: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 3:07 pm
?
?Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
?
?
?
?
? ? ?Leonard, thanks for your quick and thoughtful response. ?I can see why
?Anne Carroll Moore may have been viewed as a sentimentalist and
?romanticist when it cames to children's literature, and people do love ? to
?talk about her eccentricities, such as her constant companion, a ? wooden
?doll named Nicholas, whom she treated like a real person. But I ? do think
?we also have to give credit to ACM for her understanding of the ? importance
?of honoring ethnic diversity, rather than pushing for ? assimilation. She
?was very well aware of all the different cultural ? identities represented
?in NYC neighborhoods, and made sure that her ? children's librarians
?understood and celebrated the communities they ? served. ? ?My children's
?literature professor, Gertrude Herman, worked as a ? children's librarian
?under ACM in the New York Public Library System, ? and I loved getting her
?to tell stories about that time. She worked in a ? Czech neighborhood, and,
?as a result, had to learn ev
??erything she could ? about Czech culture. She said after a few years at
?NYPL, she knew more ? about the Czech people than she did about her own
?cultural heritage. ? ? I've always wondered if ACM's great affinity for
?cultural diversity is, ? at least in part, what led to the publication of so
?many novels set in ? other countries during from the late 1920s through the
?1950s. Did that ? come up at all in your research? ? ?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: ?>
?>From the beginnings of library service to children at the turn of the ? >
?last century, public librarians emerged as the leading arbitors of ? >
?quality in children's literature. Anne Carroll was certainly the best ? >
?known member of the group, and quite powerful, but she wa
??s not ? > all-powerful. She had a rival just across the East Rive
?
?r in Clara ? > Whitehill Hunt, who headed children's services at the
?Brooklyn Public ? > Library system starting in 1903, which was three
?years before ACM went ? > to New York Public. In fact, Moore left her
?position at the Pratt ? > demonstration library when she saw that Hunt
?was about to trump her in ? > Brooklyn. Moore was right to realize that
?the NYPL, with its proximity ? > to publishers' offices, was the biggest
?prize of all, and she seized ? > that opportunity when it came her way
?and made the most of it. From ? > then on Moore was involved in
?everything: the establishment of Book ? > Week and of the Newbery and
?Caldecott Medals (though it was Hunt who ? > served as the first Newbery
?chair), the publication of her own annual ? > lists, review work for the
?Herald Tribune and the Horn Book, and less ? > formally as an advisor to
?publishers. There are letters from the ? > D'Aulaires both to Moore and
?Hunt thanking each of them for
??having ? > been the one librarian to inspire them to begin making
?picture books. ? > They must have been a very politic pair. ?> ?>
?Some publishers listened to Moore and others didn't. May Massee, a ? >
?former librarian and Booklist editor when she founded Doublday's ? >
?juveniles dept in the early 1920s, allied herself closely with Moore. ? >
?Later when Massee moved to Viking she published Ruth Sawyer (winner of
?> the Newbery for ROLLER SKATES), who was a good friend of Moore's and a
?> sometime storyteller at NY Public. It certainly helped the young ? >
?Robert McCloskey to win the approval of Moore that he was Sawyer's ? >
?son-in-law, and that his wife was herself a children's librarian. ?>
?> Louise Bechtel of Macmillan was politic but as often as not scornful
?> Moore's opinions. Bechtel published Lewis Hines' photo essay MEN AT
?> WORK, knowing in advance (one can assume) that Moore would dismiss the
?> book as Bank
??Street-inspired here and now realism (it's a book of ? > photos t
?
?hat follows the construction of the Empire State Building, and ? > has
?since won a place as a classic of documentary photography). Ursula ? >
?Nordstrom, who belonged to the next generation of editors, was more ? >
?openly contemptuous of Moore. ?> ?> But Moore as I said was not the
?only powerful librarian. Alice Jordan, ? > at Boston Public Library,
?tutored the founder of The Horn Book in ? > children's literature when
?the latter was just starting out as the ? > proprietor of a children's
?bookshop built on reformist ideals. And ? > Jordan was far more
?responsive to the kinds of experimental books that ? > Margaret Wise
?Brown was writing than Moore was, so there was a range ? > of critical
?opinon, even at the time when a few powerful voices ? > dominated the
?scene. ?> ?> From the 1920s onward, progressive educators led by Bank
?Street's Lucy ? > Mitchell put themselves forward as minders with a
?different philosophy ? > frp, that of
? ?Moore, whom they viewed as a sentimentalist and Romantic ? > about
?childhood. Alice Dalgliesh, who founded the Scribner juvenile ? >
?department in the mid-1930s, came from Teachers College, Columbia ? >
?University, which was another center of progressive education thought ? >
?and practice, and so was not likely to fall into line unquestioning ? >
?with Moore's pronouncements, either. ?> ?> In the 1940s the creators
?of Golden Books found a way to bypass the ? > library system altogether
?by publishing inexpensive books that parents ? > could buy directly at
?five and dime stores, drug stores, and later ? > supermarkets. The
?editors craved the respectibility that library ? > approval could confer
?on a publishing enterprise, and when they had ? > the chance to persuade
?a Caldecott winning artist (for instance ? > Elizabeth Orton Jones) to
?work for them, they did so. But the great ? > success of Golden Books in
?the middle decades of the 19
??00s is perhaps ? > the best proof of all of the limits of the lib
?
?rarians' power as "minders." ?> ?> 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 ?> ?>
?-----Original Message----- ?> From: Kathleen T. Horning
?<horning at education.wisc.edu> ?> To:
?ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu ?> Sent: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:32 pm
?> Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers ?>
?> 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
?<mailto:horning at education.wisc.edu>;
?http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ ?> ? ? ? ? leonardsma at aol.com
?<mailto: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 real ?> ?> ism
?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 a
??t 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
?or
??ientation, a tendency that can be traced back to ? Puritan New Engla
?
?nd 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 Boo ?> ?>
?ks 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 departmen
??t 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
?<mailto:leonardsma at aol.com>; ? ?> ?> web www.leonardmarcus.com
?<http://www.leonardmarcus.com>; ?> ?> ?>
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