Do you see spring?

I think spring may actually be on its way! The snow is finally beginning to melt, birds are out and about, and the temperature is slowly creeping upward. I cannot wait for spring to officially arrive, and I am just as excited about our new set of toddler books. They are sweet, rhyming stories that walk a child through the beauty of each season. With adorable characters and vibrant art, these little gems will hopefully get everyone excited about the changing of the seasons.

Happy Birthday, Princess!

Today is Wonder Woman’s birthday! Well, actually it’s Lynda Carter’s birthday. But she was Wonder Woman, right? Because of her TV show, every young girl and boy in America knew about those bullet-repelling bracelets and the lasso of truth. The real DC Wonder Woman made her debut in the 40s, along with her Justice League buddies Superman and Batman.

I’m thinking a lot about Wonder Woman these days because, starting in January 2010, we will be introducing her to a whole new generation of kids as part of our DC Super Heroes chapter books. The books are in final edit and the new covers have just been finished. Wonder Woman – Princess Diana of the Amazons. She’s strong, she’s fearless, and she’s intelligent. Google created a new logo to celebrate this year's Comic-con, and it includes Wonder Woman. Why? Because she’s an icon for the 21st Century. She practically invented girl power.

And those bracelets are still working!

Meg in Mankato

It doesn’t matter if you are a tween, a teen, or an adult, when you read a Meg Cabot book (or series), you feel like she’s reading your mind. Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls. The Princess Diaries. The Queen of Babble. Meg Cabot relates to women of all ages.

I (along with fellow editor Julie Gassman) was lucky enough to see Meg Cabot speak in Mankato, Minnesota, this week. As Meg talked about her books, I couldn’t help but feel like I was listening to my sister or best friend. She was funny, relatable, and honest. It’s easy to see why her books are so popular. Meg Cabot gets it. And finding “it” is not easy in the book publishing world—especially with the teen set.

Meg talked about how Maud Hart Lovelace (the well-known author of the Betsy Tacy books) has inspired her voice as a writer. Lovelace was able to write stories that are timeless. Her characters and stories are still relevant today. Meg has tried to do the same with her books and characters.

As a writer, connecting to audiences and writing timeless stories is the ultimate achievement. As an editor, it’s a challenge to help writers achieve this goal, but it’s our job. It’s fun to imagine my children reading timeless classics and finding new classics, hopefully published by Stone Arch Books or Picture Window Books.:)

-Christianne Jones (Managing Editor, Capstone Fiction)


P.S. It must be written that Meg Cabot wore the most amazing dress. She looked like she could play the part of any one of her characters in a movie adaptation.

Rooster, Owl, and a Little Chicken

Beth is right about how being scared is a matter of perspective, age, and experience. While I was perusing picture books at Wild Rumpus, I was followed by a very curious, and persistent, bantam rooster. I remember being terrified as a child by these creatures when I visited my Great-Uncle Maynard’s farm in southern Minnesota. Of course, now that I have grown taller since then, roosters (or chickens) no longer frighten me, although they still creep me out.

I sat down in an overstuffed chair at the shop, with my arms full of books. The rooster followed. It stood a few feet away and stared at me. Clucking. It could probably smell my fear. (Can poultry smell?) In any case, I tried to distract myself by picking up a paperback reader from a nearby spinner rack. It was Arnold Lobel’s Owl at Home. It was written over 30 years ago, but it was still compelling. Lobel’s stories are simple, appropriate, intriguing, and never condescending. They even have touches of true poetic beauty. I thought of the new Stone Arch Book reader sets we had completed this season, and the impact they will have on our youngest readers. Hopefully, the stories we tell will stay with a child long after they’ve grown and moved on to chapter books and graphic novels. After they’ve outgrown their fears, too. Like beady-eyed roosters.

Spring Weeding

Even on a day off, there’s no getting away from books. Yesterday I volunteered at one of Minneapolis’s inner-city schools. A teacher I know there needed help moving into a new classroom – just across the hall from his old classroom. He taught 4th grade this past year, and next year he’ll be teaching 3rd graders, so he asked me to help him weed his book collection, pulling out anything that might not be appropriate for his younger readers. Weeding is such an intense, personal chore. You’re confronted with dozens of difficult choices with each book you pick up. And just because I love a particular book – for example, he had a copy of Rumer Godden’s exquisite The Mousewife – doesn’t mean 3rd graders will share my enthusiasm. Now I know what librarians have to go through. My friend had bought most of those books himself over the years. Many of the books were tattered, had ripped covers, or had handwriting scrawled on them. They had been touched and opened and read by hundreds of little hands. These were books that had become part of children’s lives, at least during those hours they spent in my friend’s classroom. These books meant something to all of us – to the students, to my generous friend, and finally to me, who had to choose what to keep and what to discard. The Mousewife is now sitting on a shelf in my bedroom.

On Heroes and Geniuses

March is National Women’s History Month. So I thought since we’re also celebrating heroes at Stone Arch Books this month, I’d take this opportunity to talk a little bit about one of my heroes.

These days, it’s not hard to find a female children’s book editor. There are a few major metropolises where you can’t turn around without looking at one. But just a few decades ago, there weren’t many women editors in the business, and children’s books as a separate industry didn’t even exist. The people who first decided to focus on books specifically written for children have shaped the industry—and more personally, my career. And many of them were women.

One of the most famous is Ursula Nordstrom. An editor at Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 to 1973, her list of authors and illustrators reads like a “Best-of-Children’s-Lit” list. When I started my first internship in book publishing, the editor who mentored me recommended the book Dear Genius, Leonard Marcus’s collection of Ursula Nordstrom’s editorial letters. I was especially touched by (and felt so much in common with her because of) the first letter in the collection: a frantic letter written to Laura Ingalls Wilder in 1937, apologizing for a “stupid mistake” that had appeared in a dummy of On the Banks of Plum Creek.

At the time I first discovered Ursula Nordstrom, I was a college senior commuting to New York City for my internship. On the train to and from Manhattan, I’d read Ursula’s letters to her authors (people like Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, E. B. White) and dream of the day I too would be a children’s book editor. So, in this month when we’re thinking about women and heroes, I’m thinking a lot about Ursula Nordstrom, grateful that she—and so many other women—paved the way for someone like me to achieve her childhood dream of reading books for kids all day long.


Beth Brezenoff
Senior Editor, SAB