Book Review: Julie of the Wolves, Reissued

One of "Most Frequently Challenged" 
Kid's Classics, Now an eBook

Open Road Integrated Media has reissued Julie of the Wolves as an eBook. Were books just better in the olden days? Nah, probably not. But rereading Julie after all these years (it was first published in 1972, by Harper and Row, and was championed by one of my heroes in the book biz, editor Ursula Nordstrom), it might seem that way. In fact, Nordstrom commissioned Julie after a single brief meeting with author Jean Craighead George. In George's memory:

[Nordstrom] was bent over her desk in concentration, her gray hair grooved where her fingers had pressed. Hearing us, she turned around and her penetrating eyes met mine head on. She nodded to say she knew who I was and why I was there.
"I want to write a book," I said, "about an Eskimo girl who is lost on the Arctic tundra. She survives by communicating with a pack of wolves in their own language."
"Will it be accurate?"
"Yes."
"I'll write you up your contract and advance now."

Ursula Nordstrom: Keeping the Channel Open

Mama Bear Nordstrom

Whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, in a writerly sort of way,  I have a two-pronged approach to shaking myself out of it: 1) Reread the letters of Ursula Nordstrom, and 2) Pretend that she's writing them to me.

Nordstrom was the doyenne of kidlit--an assistant, then editor,  board member, VP, and finally semi-retired "consultant" to Harper Books for Boys and Girls from the late '30s until she died of ovarian cancer in 1988 -- she extricated children's literature from its vat of sugar-and-spice, dusted it off, and set it down firmly in the real world. Nordstrom had no fear of the dark side. She edited and championed E.B. White's Charlotte's Web (First line: "Where's Papa going with that ax?"); her letters to White about Garth Williams's spider illustrations are priceless. She discovered Maurice Sendak and gave him a real job (he was dressing windows at F.A.O. Schwartz), hiring him to illustrate Little Bear. Under her aegis dozens of authors won Newberys, National Book Awards, and Hans Christian Anderson Medals. If you haven't read her letters, Dear Genius, you must.