Behind Our Favorite Children's Books, a Woman Who Championed Imagination | Big Think

Behind Our Favorite Children's Books, a Woman Who Championed Imagination

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This video is part of a series on female genius, in proud collaboration with 92Y's 7 Days of Genius Festival.

Some of our most timeless children's books — The Giving Tree, Charlotte's Web, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon — are the result of the little-known publisher Ursula Nordstrom. Editor-in-chief of children's books at Harper & Row through the middle of the 20th century, Nordstrom championed complex, non-commercial stories for children at a time when it was unpopular to do so. The friendships she built with authors like Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, helped embolden their talents and bestow their gifts upon children of all ages.
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MARIA POPOVA:

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TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Popova: Hardly anyone has raised more conscientious imaginative children than the legendary mid century children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who brought to life such multi generational classics as Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon, E.B. White's Charlottes Web, Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. During her long tenure at Harper and Row, Nordstrom was not just an editor to her authors and her artist but their friend, their confident, their therapist, their greatest champion always. She stood up against censorship and constantly bolstered the creative confidence of these young writers and artists. She was especially instrumental in the life of Maurice Sendak, who might not to be we know him as today without her. And she, by the way, was a beautiful letter writer. Her letters are collected in a book called Dear Genius by the children's book historian Leonard Marcus. And so in one exchange with Sendak he wrote to her despairing over having been commissioned to illustrate the work of Tolstoy and feeling utterly inadequate to match Tolstoy's genius.

And so she wrote to him and said, "You may not be Tolstoy but Tolstoy wasn't Sendak either. You have a vast and beautiful genius." This emboldened Sendak enormously and by the following year he was already working on his very own Where the Wild Things Are, which went on to become one of the most beloved children's books of all time. But most of all Nordstrom defended the world and the experience of the child against all the commercial pressures for commodities and conformity and politely boring story telling that dominated children's books at the time. And so the most benevolent patron saint of modern childhood ended up being a gay woman working at the height of consumerism and somehow managing to publish and envision and defend books that were not forgettable commodities but extraordinary masterworks that stood the test of time and moved and inspired and enchanted generations.



This video is part of a series on female genius, in proud collaboration with 92Y's 7 Days of Genius Festival.

Some of our most timeless children's books — The Giving Tree, Charlotte's Web, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon — are the result of the little-known publisher Ursula Nordstrom. Editor-in-chief of children's books at Harper & Row through the middle of the 20th century, Nordstrom championed complex, non-commercial stories for children at a time when it was unpopular to do so. The friendships she built with authors like Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, helped embolden their talents and bestow their gifts upon children of all ages.

[kokofan]

Think you Big Think for a video talking about a women that doesn't make the most important thing about her being a women.

[JV-widz]

her robot brows are still learning to mimic human momvements

[georgewillow]

That f*cking necklace, seriously. Am I the only one who gets so irritated by just being aware of it's existence?

Really, I can't be the only one, am I?

[JaredJanes]

I love how eloquent Maria speech is, I would love to hear from her more often - not just in the written form :)

[Capgungoesbang]

I like the way this woman presents her stories about innovative women.

[vincentbryan]

The necklace attracts most of my attention

[homeycdawg]

I'll bet she wore that necklace on a dare.

[TheRockTiger]

Nordström seems like a saint and all but few outside America knows her work. Astrid Lindgren on the other hand...

[DrywallJackson]

she has a good message to convey but her clothes seem so 80s and she speaks like she's reading from a script, which kinda makes it difficult to feel like you're having a conversation with the speaker like how you do with other big think videos

[rorygrice]

I might be interested in this series if it was hosted by someone in an expert in the field of the subject and understood it thoroughly rather than someone who appears to be reading off a teleprompter. I already knew a bit about the first programmer from the challenge scishow and it was interesting when someone with a passion and aptitude for science explain. Big think took an interesting subject and made it boring by making it about the fact that she was a woman not the fact that she was the first programmer, and almost entirely ignoring the programming aspect. They talked more about how she was a god damn poet than she was a programmer!

[JewTube]

I'm distracted by this time traveling post-singularity androids' attempt at early 21st century fashion.
why are you here? What makes this message of such import to chance disturbing the spacetime continuum? why!?

[tamicha]

Wait...where are all the reactionary SQWs whining that they're talking about a woman?