Mary Stolz

Mary Stolz, author of over sixty books for children, died on December 15, 2006, in Longboat Key, Florida, at the age of 86. Translated into over twenty languages, her work ranged from picture books to books for older readers. Two of her novels, Belling the Tiger and The Noonday Friends, received Newbery Honor awards.

We remember her with three pieces:
    • Stolz’s 1989 tribute to her editor, Ursula Nordstrom.
    • Our original reviews of her two Newbery Honor books.

From the January/February 1989 Horn Book Magazine

Ursula Nordstrom 1910–1988

By Mary Stolz

n the fall of 1949, in the handsome old brick building on 33rd Street that housed the publishing firm of Harper & Brothers, I sat in a small office beside the desk of a woman I already found electrifying. “I’m Ursula Nordstrom,” she said. “If you are willing to do some work, we’d like to publish your book.” My first meeting with the matchless editor of children’s books, the great U.N.

Later she said that she considered me pretty cool for someone who’d just had her first book taken by the first publisher who saw it. I was not cool. I walked out of the building, up Park Avenue to Grand Central, got on the train, and when the conductor came for my ticket, stared at him and said, “I forgot. I drove in.”

There began that day, for her and me, a vital relationship that grew in closeness and affection, though at times we became as prickly as a pair of porcupines rattling at each other. In these stand-offs Ursula had an extra quill to toss — her legendary wit. One thrust brought stupefaction. Still, nothing shook the firm foundation of our understanding. Mine of her, especially hers of me. She had an unerring comprehension of the nervous system of writers. Limitless patience, an insight without myopic periods. I imagine she could be gentle with those she felt unequal to her furiously high standards, but if she thought you were able, but failed, to reach them — ah, woe.

Long ago, I wrote a book called A Wonderful Terrible Time (Harper) and some years later dedicated another: “To Ursula, For a Wonderful Terrible Time.” That made sense to us. I dedicated three books to her. In a sense I might have done all of them. I’d not be the writer I’ve managed to become without her.

When someone important to us dies, our response is disbelief. That a being we cannot spare has gone beyond our reach, that no need of ours can find her, is a concept too vast for our capacity. They say that time assuages but don’t say how much time. I lost a beloved cousin twenty years ago and have not adjusted yet. Although Ursula has been long retired, I seem still to exist in the aura of her brooding concern for each book of which she was the shepherd. She could be all things to all her writers, and no one who received them can forget those long, marvelous, incisive, intuitive editorial letters, typed by herself at stunning speed, with their way — their genius — of pointing out what you hadn’t known you’d done, or, equally, drawing attention to what you might rethink. She never actually changed a word, a sentence, even an idea. She never said,. “Take this out; change this.” She’d say, “Would you like to give this more thought?” She’d write in the margin, “Interesting, but what are you trying to SAY?” In a cleanly decipherable hand she would put a marginal note, NGEFY (Not Good Enough For You). She’d observe, “You say here, ‘He had a smile on his face.’ Where would it be, on his foot?” Or, “‘Really’ and ‘very’ make nothing more so.” Or, “Heads are not decapitated, bodies are.” Or, “‘True facts’? There are other kinds?” From Ursula I learned the first, middle, and last rule for the children’s book writer: Show, don’t tell. I learned to cut — not only without pain but with positive pleasure — from Ursula and Mme. de Lafayette, whom she quoted to me. “A word deleted is worth a sou — a sentence, a gold louis.”

Since Ursula retired from Harper, I’ve had several fine editors. I think they’d understand when I say that she was the only one whose judgment I so trusted that if she said of a book — even of a novel, and that’s a lot of pages — NGEFY, I discarded it. Not filed. Threw out. Over the years I’ve tossed in the waste-basket easily a dozen completed (I thought) first drafts, including one long novel and a few short ones, that Ursula had, in effect, sniffed at. “Don’t worry,” she’d say. “You’re prolific.” I’ve never regretted those discards.

When she accepted a book, no matter how much work she felt was going to be necessary, no manuscript came back for revision without kind, generous notations. “I laughed out loud at this.” “This is so good.” Or, my favorite, “Lovely.”

She had an eye that missed nothing, a refinement of taste that rejected the shoddy or careless, and a vision that allowed her to accept, and generate, ideas unacceptable, even unheard of, when she entered the field of children’s literature. I Can Read books, to make beginning readers want to. Those were Ursula’s fancy, made fact by her persistence. The acceptance of mundane realities — that children don’t always get along with their parents and sometimes want to get back at them, that girls menstruate, that even in storybooks things don’t always end happily, that monsters are marvelously appealing to children, that human beings are not uniformly white, that little boys floating around nude are endowed with genitals.

Somerset Maugham said that until the age of fifty writing is hard work; after that it is just another bad habit. I have it. Possibly I’ve given up smoking, but it hasn’t seemed possible to give up the addiction of writing. So even now, with Ursula gone, I shall probably work every morning for three hours, because that’s what I’ve been doing all these years since first we met. Even after she retired, though she never again offered a syllable of editorial comment, she wanted me to write, insisted that I write, read what I wrote. That, too, was a habit she and I couldn’t break. What I, and her other writers, have to understand now is that Ursula Nordstrom, her own self, who cared so passionately about us and our books, doesn’t care at all any more what we write. She doesn’t care if we write. It’s too unreasonable. It’s beyond my capacity to credit. If Ursula doesn’t read it, how can I be sure I’ve written it?

More on Ursula Nordstrom

Mary Stolz  Belling the Tiger; illus. by Beni Montresor
      Harper
      Reviewed 8/61
For children leaving the “I Can Read” stage (and those being read to) this will seem an amusing storybook, with jolly drawings of mice, cats, and an enormous tiger. The old tale of belling the cat has a welcome fresh twist in the adventures of tiny twin mice cast in the classic role, who perform a more heroic task than they know will ever be believed. Attractive bookmaking and imaginative pictures by a young artist from Italy add distinction to good storytelling. v.h.

Mary Stolz  The Noonday Friends; illus. by Louis S. Glanzman
      Harper
      Reviewed 10/65
Franny Davis’ father is an artist, but he can’t keep a job, so Franny’s mother works. Franny takes care of her little brother and tolerates her other one, an eleven-year-old twin. She has a friend, a Puerto Rican girl, whose seven brothers and sisters burden her with even more home responsibility than Franny’s. Because there is seldom time for the girls to be together, their friendship becomes a noonday affair shared over lunches at school. The story revolves around Franny and Simone (mostly Franny) and the members of their Greenwich Village families — how they react to responsibility, frustration, and success and also to each other. Nothing much happens, but the reader is intensely involved in the problems and emotions of all these people. It is Franny’s need for assurance and her longing for a friend who wants “to be friends back” that give unity and focus to the whole. While seeing themselves and their acquaintances in characters that they will care a lot about, fifth and sixth graders can take their first steps toward the author’s novels for older readers. p.l.m.

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