Nevertheless, American publishers still relied primarily on sales of well-known titles that
they acquired one way or another from Britain, including Appleton’s financial coup of
picking up a supply of discarded sheets from a printing of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland. Not until 1894, in fact, did the number of domestic juvenile titles exceed
those coming from European sources when the totals reached 370 and 297 respectively
while approximately 5,400 books were being published overall.
By the turn of the century, juvenile output had climbed to 482 titles, one of which
may prove to be the most timeless of all: The Wizard of Oz by L.Frank Baum. An
innovative departure from the realistic content of other American juvenile writers, this
wildly imaginary fantasy was still a home-grown product, firmly rooted in the USA
through its opening setting of the tornado-ridden Kansas prairie. By combining the
English fondness for word play with the American appetite for outdoor adventure, Baum
developed an original style and form that stands alone in the literature of both countries.
During these years, the publishing community was also coming of age in its recognition
of the need for copyright regulation, supporting the passage of an International
Copyright Law in 1891. The first steps were modest, however, with only a simple
announcement of the intention to publish enough to establish copyright and no
payment to the original copyright holder required.
The next advance came in the second decade of the twentieth century when several
companies decided that the juvenile market had become large enough to warrant special
staff attention. Until this time, children’s books had been included here and there in the
offerings of a publisher’s general trade list and were sometimes overlooked, losing sales
in the process. But now these firms began to appoint editors with the specific
responsibility of producing an independent list of children’s books, thus identifying
these titles more clearly and selling them more effectively. This pioneering juvenile editor
had to perform as a book designer, publicity director and sales manager, while carrying
out the basic duties of manuscript acquisition and preparation. But as the market share
of children’s books slowly increased within the company, publishers began to provide
their juvenile editorial departments with these services.
This structural change turned out to have a far-reaching effect on the business and
was set in motion by three developments that occurred almost simultaneously on three
different fronts in the aftermath of the First World War. By that time, the trend toward
separate children’s rooms in public libraries, presided over by a specialist in library
services for children, was well established, creating more demand for original books in
addition to new editions of familiar classics. Then, in 1919, a promotion known as
Children’s Book Week was launched by Frederic Melcher, editor of the trade magazine
Publisher’s Weekly, and Franklin Mathiews, librarian of the Boy Scouts of America;
children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore of the New York Public Library started the first
full year of her children’s book review page in the Bookman magazine; and Louise
Seaman (later Bechtel) became the first children’s book editor at Macmillan Publishing.
During the ten years that followed, other publishing companies also set up juvenile
departments, and the books that resulted more than justified their existence. In 1922,
May Massee became the second children’s book editor with her own list, at Doubleday
Doran, and she quickly drew attention with the publication of such books as The Poppy-
Seed Cakes by Margery Clark, illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham. At the same
472 CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHING IN THE USA