Susan Hirschman, founder, publisher, and editorial director of Greenwillow Books, retires this month after 47 years in the children’s book business.
Her gentle-yet-insightful editorial style inspired a long list of award-winning authors including Jack Prelutsky, Virginia Hamilton, Chris Crutcher, Kevin Henkes and Donald Crews.
Hirschman worked under Ursula Nordstrom at Harper for ten years before leaving for Macmillian in 1964. A decade later, she started Greenwillow, later acquired by HarperCollins.
Barbara Odanaka spoke with Hirschman on the eve of her retirement in 2001 about her half-century in children’s books.
Odanaka: What are your earliest memories about children's books?
Susan Hirschman: I grew up with books and don’t remember a time without them. I still have a great many of my picture books from the 30’s—Hansi, Noodle, Little Fat Gretchen, The Little Wooden Farmer, Who Goes There?, Ola and many others. I remember being read to a lot—particularly The Just So Stories. Books were always my favorite present and a very important part of my life.
Odanaka: Who or what were your greatest influences in your career?
Hirschman: I worked for Ursula Nordstrom at Harper for ten years and she was certainly an enormous influence on my career. She was an enormously talented woman, and watching her work taught me almost everything I know. She cared passionately about her authors and artists—and she cared just as passionately about the children who read the books.
I was enormously fortunate to work with her from l955 to l964—a glorious period of creativity. The I Can Read Books were begun, Tomi Ungerer did his first book, as did Karla Kuskin, Peggy Parish, Arnold Lobel, and so many, many others.
Odanaka: What have you learned from your authors and illustrators?
Hirschman: I have learned that no two people, no two books, and no two anything are alike. Each new book is an adventure—for its creator and for its editor. The surprises are constant—and wonderful. You never know what to expect, and so you are constantly being stunned and delighted. Creativity is wonderfully invigorating, and being surrounded by it is a real privilege.
Odanaka: What do you think they learned from you?
Hirschman: I hope they have learned from me that they are right in doing exactly what they are doing: that it matters and that no one else can do it.
Odanaka: Which books are you most proud to have edited?
Hirschman: I can’t really choose a few books out of the many I have worked on. I love them all, and I am proud of them all. What pleases me most is that Greenwillow has many authors and illustrators whom we have published for years and years and years. They are truly family, and their loyalty to us—and ours to them—is at the crux of Greenwillow’s success.
Odanaka: If you could do it all over again, what, if anything, would you do differently in your career?
Hirschman: I don’t think I would do anything differently if I had it to do again. I like where I have ended up, and if anything had been different, so would today be different. And I wouldn’t want that.
Odanaka: If you could change one thing in the children's book industry today, what would it be?
Hirschman: I suppose I would want to insure that books stayed in print longer. When we relied on a school and library market, one could say that to a child who hadn’t read it, any book was a new book. And books stayed in print. Today, with the retail market so important, a book that gets off to a slow start doesn’t have as much of a chance as it used to. And I wish that that were not the case.
Odanaka: Please give us an example of a perfect picture book. A perfect novel?
Hirschman: As far as perfect picture books go, I have always used The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss, with pictures by Marc Simont as an example. The pacing is incredible. There is not one word that can be cut. And the pictures–in black and white except for a touch of yellow at the end—are extraordinary.
Crictor by Tomi Ungerer is also perfect, in my opinion, because of what it leaves out of the words and puts into the pictures. You have to read the book several times before you see all the details that could so easily have been in the text but are not—because they are in the pictures. As far as perfect novels go, that seems to me far more subjective. I don’t have a candidate, and I don’t really see how there could be one. Favorites, yes. Perfect, who knows.
Odanaka: How do you plan to reward yourself for your half century of hard work?
Hirschman: I don’t need a reward for these past years—the books and their creators have been my reward. I have worked with wonderful people these forty-seven years—including, very definitely, my colleagues at Greenwillow. But I suppose a real reward will be that many of the books will go on being loved and read by kids long after I am gone. And I guess that is the best reward there could be.
