For Mothers’ Day, join us to have a look into the witty and wonderful world of Ursula Nordstrom, the mother of all children’s books editors. Considered legendary now, the longtime editor at Harper Brothers Publishers staunchly believed in the creativity of children in encountering equally creative, challenging books, and she pushed and cajoled for daring, original and special books with little concern for sales, stuffy librarians or conventional wisdom. As a result, an astonishing number of her unknown clients became famous, award-winners and bestsellers.
Though never a household name herself, the self-described feminist was continually promoted, eventually becoming the first female on Harper’s board of directors, their first female vice president, later established her own publishing house, and in 1980 was the first woman to be awarded by the Association of American Publishers for a career of creativity and innovation in publishing. Despite not having a college education, Nordstrom, who was equally comfortable quoting Shakespeare or taking meetings with Warhol, worked with countless authors and illustrators from the nineteen-thirties to the eighties, prodding and massaging their drafts and sketches into classics like the Little House books, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Where the Wild Things Are, Charlotte’s Web, Danny and the Dinosaur, Stuart Little, Harriet The Spy, The Giving Tree, Little Bear, Freaky Friday, Goodnight Moon and many more.
For this special Mothers’ Day Kids In the Cliff storytime, we will read some of Nordstrom’s editorial successes featuring moms and kids like Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny and Rosalind Krauss’ The Carrot Seed and a selection from the humorous How To Make An Earthquake with her correspondence on their crafting taken from Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom.
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- FREE!
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