Take a look inside the HarperCollins archives.
Letter from John Donovan submitting the manuscript for I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.
In June 1968, author John Donovan wrote to Ursula Nordstrom, head of the U.S. Harper Children’s division, asking her to read the manuscript for what would become I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. (1969), which included an adolescent homosexual relationship. This was just one of the boundary-pushing children’s and young adult books that Nordstrom and Harper & Row championed in the 1960s. In his letter, Donovan wrote, “I just see it as a book.” When asked about progressiveness in youth literature, Nordstrom once said, “The walls crumble down just a little all the time.”
Click here to read the correspondence between John Donovan and Ursula Nordstrom.
