The July 21st issue of The New Yorker, the one with the controversial Obama cover, has some interesting articles in it that make it worth going beyond that cover. Besides a very good profile of Obama's political roots in Chicago, there's another entitled The Lion and the Mouse.
This fascinating piece tells the story of the battle between E.B. White and Anne Carroll Moore over his first book written for kids, Stuart Little. Moore was the woman who arguably opened the doors of libraries in this country to children, and who definitely did so in New York. Her tastes pretty much controlled what would be successful in children's literature for years. White's book didn't meet her idea of what was acceptable and she tried to kill its publication, keep it out of libraries, and ban it from schools
Obviously, she lost eventually. White had his wife on his side besides his own formidable skills as a writer. Katharine Sergeant Angell worked at The New Yorker with him as fiction editor, rising to quite possibly the highest position any woman held in publishing in the country at the time. When White insisted on moving to Maine she gave up the position, but she continued to review children's literature from Maine, reading hundreds of titles a year. So she was in a position to promote Stuart Little and did so. But Moore was able to block White from good consideraton for the Newbery Award.
But don't take my word for any of this - go read the article!
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