Children’s books explored uncharted territory in the mid-1960s as Harper & Row began to champion boundary-pushing children’s and young adult books. More
Harper editor Ferd Monjo wrote this letter to the head of the U.S. Harper Children’s division, Ursula Nordstrom, regarding a manuscript he had received in July 1968. More
In early 1945, Ursula Nordstrom, head of Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls was awaiting completion of E. B. White’s manuscript for a children’s story about a talking mouse, titled Stuart Little. More
HarperCollins Publishers began as J. & J. Harper, a small family printing shop run by brothers James and John Harper in New York City in March 1817. More
When Anne Carroll Moore, the powerful and opinionated superintendent of children’s work at the New York Public Library, asked Harper & Brothers editor Ursula Nordstrom why she felt qualified to produce children’s books, Nordstrom said only this: “Well, I am a former child, and I haven’t forgotten a thing.” More
In this letter to Collins publisher Billy Collins, dated November 1954, C. S. Lewis—author of The Chronicles of Narnia series, Mere Christianity, and The Screwtape Letters, among others—outlines what he sees as his three types of “literary output”: “A. Religious and General. B. Fiction. C. Academic.” More
This letter from E. B. White’s wife, Katharine White, to Ursula Nordstrom, head of the U.S. Harper Children’s division, expresses her husband’s excitement... More
Virginia Kirkus, inaugural department editor of Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls, launches Laura Ingalls Wilder with the publication of Little House in the Big Woods.More