GOOD BOOKS FOR BAD CHILDREN

An introduction to Ursula Nordstrom, the groundbreaking 20th-century children’s editor at Harper.

Deriving its title from a Nordstrom aphorism epitomizing her game-changing role in children’s literature, this biography showcases the editor’s upbringing, apprenticeship, and extraordinary partnerships with classic kid-lit creators. Nordstrom spends most of her youth in boarding schools after her parents’ divorce. After five years clerking in Harper’s textbook division, she becomes assistant to Ida Louise Raymond, the children’s department editor, succeeding her after she retires. Nordstrom refers to her creative colleagues as “her geniuses,” and her own editorial genius proves seismic, transforming children’s literature from stodgy obedience manuals to works of imaginative power, centering children as both readers and characters. Kephart highlights Nordstrom’s work with Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, a teenage John Steptoe, and others: “She knew what to ask her writers and artists / and how best to listen— / …and encourage their most fabulous stories.” Touching on her subject’s queer identity, Kephart characterizes Nordstrom at boarding school as “a girl who laughed, / but who could also feel alone, / and different.” Retiring to Connecticut, Nordstrom “lived with Mary Griffith, / the woman she loved.” Bristol’s illustrations—in warm browns leavened with cool pastels—depict midcentury details and varied skin tones and interpolate characters like Sendak’s Wild Things and Crockett Johnson’s Harold. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A welcome, behind-the-scenes look at one of modern children’s literature’s most glorious forces.