unrecognised by many at the time of its publication in 1947. Closely allied with these
realistic stories were the informational books written in narrative style that had begun to
appear, an early example being The Earth for Sam by W.Maxwell Reed, published in
1930 by Harcourt editor Bevier, a former school library supervisor who was keenly
aware of the need for lively, accurate juvenile non-fiction.
Again, however, children’s book publishing encountered a slow period with the
entrance of the country into the Second World War in 1941 and the diversion of
national resources to the wartime effort. Especially difficult for publishers was the
rationing of paper, now in short supply, and within three years new book production
had dropped a third to a total of 645 titles. Nevertheless, more talented editors
continued to join the business, and more successful companies continued to emerge. In
1941, Ursula Nordstrom took over the children’s book department at Harper Brothers,
expanding the staff from three to twenty-five and annual sales from a few hundred
thousand to ten million over the next twenty-five years. Shortly after, in 1942, the
innovative imprint of Golden Books made its debut, opening up an additional mass
market by producing inexpensive books priced at only twenty-five cents and selling them
through general retail outlets. Proving itself quickly, the experiment managed to achieve
annual sales of 39 million in five years. Another influential children’s editor starting her
career at this time was Margaret K.McElderry, who succeeded Elisabeth Hamilton at
Harcourt in 1946. With thirty or so editors now holding this position, the need for a
professional organisation was becoming apparent, and in 1945 the Children’s Book
Council was founded by publishers as a centre for cooperative projects benefiting the
whole industry.
As what some have called the boom decade of the 1950s started, 1,400 new children’s
books were being published annually, and juvenile publishing had achieved the status of
‘big business’. With this success came keener competition and diversification as
companies began to look for new writing and artistic talent to add to their lists and for
new markets to cultivate. At Harper, two major finds came to widespread recognition
with the publication in 1952 of Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and Ruth Krauss’s A Hole
Is to Dig with illustrations by Maurice Sendak. At Random House, attention turned to
innovative market strategy, which led to the launching in 1950 of its history and
biography series known as Landmark Books and the opening up of sales outlets outside
the traditional book market. In fact, the series format proved to be so well suited to the
expanding school market for trade books that some publishers, such as Franklin Watts
with its First Book series, began to specialise in this kind of publishing exclusively.
Then suddenly, when the Soviet Union became the first country to orbit earth
successfully with its unmanned satellite Sputnik in 1957, the school market for children’s
books surged into the forefront of juvenile publishing. Convinced that American schools
needed help if students were to be able to compete internationally, Congress passed the
National Defense Education Act in the next year, making federal funds available to
schools for the purchase of library books in the fields of science and mathematics. What
followed was a vast outpouring of non-fiction, bringing overdue attention to creative non-
fiction writers, but also sparking the publication of hasty work designed to capitalise on
the demand that seemed to materialise overnight. Still, out of this period emerged a
number of pioneering authors, Herbert S.Zim for one, who showed how the van Loon
474 CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHING IN THE USA