Natural Born Editor

Richard Jackson has been editing children's books for nearly four decades. Known for his exceptional instincts for finding and nurturing talent, Jackson has introduced the world to such names as Judy Blume, Paula Fox, George Ella Lyon, Virginia Hamilton, Chris Raschka, and Angela Johnson. In 1968, Jackson founded Bradbury Press with Robert Verrone. In 1986, he cofounded Orchard Books and, in 1996, he cofounded DK Ink. Recently, Jackson became editorial director of Richard Jackson Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster's Atheneum division. The move seemed like a good time to ask Jackson to reflect on his career and on the state of children's publishing. We spoke to him by phone at his home in California.

You've published some outstanding writers, people like Judy Blume, Paula Fox, Gary Paulsen, Cynthia Rylant, George Ella Lyon, Frances Temple—the list goes on and on. How do you find your writers?

Often through other writers. A lot depends upon personal connection. If a writer has had a good experience with me editorially, she or he may send a friend. George Ella Lyon has sent me many people over the years: Jenny Davis, Paul Brett Johnson, Anne Shelby to name three. Avi is another good source. And there are a couple of writing classes whose students regularly send me manuscripts. A first novel that DK Ink published, Life Is Funny, came to me because the teacher thought I might like it. (From her class I now publish three writers, Joan Abelove, Lucy Frank, and—no relation—E. R. Frank.) Of course, I get many, many manuscripts, even in California, where I work at home. Some publishers don't read unsolicited submissions anymore, but I still do. Or, I should say, I read into each. Most I don't finish, it's true. There are days when I think, Does the world need one more book? There are other days when I feel really energetic, hopeful about finding some strong new voice.

Publishing Judy Blume might certainly be considered a milestone, especially in the early '70s. What quality in Judy's work made you know that the time was right for publishing her?

I really didn't think about the time. I felt her voice was so extraordinarily pure, I just couldn't worry that we were going to raise hackles. I mean we—that would be my late partner, Bob Verrone, and I, and maybe Judy too—knew the candor of the books would cause a stir. There's always someone to be offended. But it was never to raise hackles that we published her. It was the voice, and the absence of adult regret, instruction, or nostalgia in those novels. She turns them over to the kids, over to the characters. She manages to deal with plot almost entirely through dialogue. And her books listen so well. I think that's one of the reasons they appeal to kids. Judy hears from young women who read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret in the '70s and now have children who are reading that same Margaret's story. It must be terrifically pleasing for Judy, knowing that she's gone from one generation to another.

Do you think about censorship when you are making decisions about what to publish?

I think about censors. I recently had a discussion with a picture book writer, also the artist, about using the word "devil"—and showing the character, along with an angel, in the illustrations. Could you use "imp" instead? I asked, to sidestep the religious issue and the religious censors. The writer was annoyed, and she was forcefully clear about why, in the story's medieval setting, a devil was exactly what she meant. But she did, ultimately, agree to the change. Or gave in to me, because I was citing the practical. Why deprive kids in some parts of the country of what is, essentially, a story about a dog who cleverly helps her master? So, is this censorship? One might say it's making an adjustment to reality. But I regret the reality, that's for sure. I leave the final decision about accommodation to the writer, and hold my breath. I have been called upon to defend books, some of them surprising. For example, I got into a real buzz-saw relationship with a woman who very much objected to Paula Fox's Radiance Descendingbecause of the portrayal of the boy with Down's Syndrome, a boy seen through the eyes of his unloving brother. The book is about the brother, and his evolving conscience, not the younger boy with Down's Syndrome. This would-be censor wanted the book "withdrawn" because the young boy is seen—until the end—impatiently, non-optimistically. She started an e-mail campaign against us. That hurt—but then the book hurt her in ways we had not foreseen and certainly didn't intend. She wanted a different book than the one Paula wanted to write. That is often the case with censors.

You edited Making Up Megaboyby Virginia Walter, which we think is a very important book. But we've heard frightened librarians and teachers say they wouldn't want to use this book after Columbine. What would you say to these people?

I think of the book as a cautionary tale. But its power lies in the fact that it draws no overall moral. It simply puts an inexplicable situation on public view (it was completed before Columbine). I wanted to publish it because I'm very, very terrified of guns. I wish that people who are frightened of this book could see that fright is itself like pain. It's telling us something. It's getting us to look deeper into something, our natures, American society, the future. Kids can be encouraged and are capable of looking deeper into almost anything. I know it's a disturbing book. It makes me shiver to think of it, but that's an expression of its power.

Is there a book you regret turning turned down at some time in your career?

Yes. Several have been serious publishing mistakes on my part. One of them was Thomas Rockwell's How to Eat Fried Worms. I knew kids would love it. But I couldn't bear to read about those worms over and over again—a personal reaction, but I should have been able to put that aside. (I can never put aside the personal.) I also turned down a picture book text by Judy Blume about a little boy who swallows a turtle. Her agent then sent it to Ann Durell at Dutton, who very astutely saw it as a chapter in a longer book. I declined Morris's Disappearing Bagby Rosemary Wells, three of whose books I had published in the early days of Bradbury Press. When that book appeared, I had to laugh. I'd seen the first dummy. Morris, I remember, was a boy with sneakers. I didn't have Phyllis Fogelman's good idea that Rosemary make the characters into those wonderful furry creatures instead of people—an enormously important piece of advice. So, yes, I regret not having published these books because I couldn't see clearly enough. There are also a couple I wish I'd had a chance to consider and sign up: Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Everand Russell Hoban's The Mouse and His Child.

How do you imagine books fitting into the fabric of a child's life today? Are they entertainment, solace, vicarious experience, or escape?

The best thing about a book is that it's a private experience. A book invites one into a world that one partly creates. That's what readers do. The almost mystical connection between reader and what's read cannot be achieved in other, more public forms of communication, like television. A TV show, a movie, is entirely a given; viewers can react but not contribute to them creatively. Books allow for contribution. They allow one to get quiet and to regulate one's own pace. So the appeal is a combination of escape and control. I look forward to the kind of stolen time that books represent. And I think children do, too.

I know that you're a very proud grandfather. Has being a grandfather changed the way you look at books?

It has. I've gotten interested in the pursuit of truck books. I think about my grandchildren now when I look at books for the very young. When I'm reading a manuscript, I do ponder whether it might appeal to them. And if I think no, and fully understand my reasoning, then I very often won't publish it. I've needed years to realize this, but I edit in order to understand the book I've bought. These days I'm trying to understand on my grandchildren's behalf.

It's clear that children's novels have changed over the years. But children's book illustration has also changed. Some critics believe that true illustration has given way to more experimental works of art in children's books. What are your feelings about the direction illustration has taken ?

I would say: What's wrong with change? It's addition, not obliteration. Change doesn't bother me at although I don't always do it well. There's a book from Houghton Mifflin, Flicker Flash by Joan Bransfield Graham and illustrated by Nancy Davis, which looks very much like these times. It's computer art, and it's simply dazzling. I wonder if I'd have seen the possibilities there. My feeling about illustration is that too much of it looks interchangeable. I flick halfway through a book, not always reading, I confess, and often stop to think, I've see this all before. I'm sorry, but I've gotten tired of grinning little dot-eyed children being happy. I would rather have an art experience when I look at a picture---and when I look at any book.

Do you think that we're entering a golden age of books or have we left one behind?

Oh, I hope every age is golden in some way. We may well be entering a new one. But I can only answer by analogy. Not long ago I was asked for some names of editors who might be suitable for a new position opening up, and I realized that I hardly know anybody anymore. I've been succeeded. There are some terrific young editors—a few I've worked with—and they have as many good ideas as I thought I had when I was young. My only concern about the future golden age is that editing itself has changed. I hear writers fretting that nobody gets back to them, that nobody edits them these days. By editing, I mean paying attention to what each writer and illustrator intends with a work, and expecting each to do the hard thing of achieving it. The opportunity to really concentrate on the literature itself, as opposed to the marketing of the literature—inside the publishing house and outside in the commercial world—is something that editors can rarely enjoy today as we could years ago. There are some of us who are natural marketers, but I'm not one of those. I'm a natural editor. The future golden-agers will be both. Basically, what I deal with is the book.

You must feel proud of the contributions that you've made to the children's book world. And certainly many writers and illustrators are very loyal to you as their editor. Do you feel like a literary giant?

No. The truth is I'm just as anxious every day about doing the job well as I was when Bradbury began in 1968. The possibility of having one's work behind one is oddly daunting. I'm thinking about what's in front. That's what matters to me. Every day there's the chance of doing something good (by which I believe I mean new) and the chance of being a bore. A publishing bore. I think some of my backlist was the product of remarkable good fortune, good chemistry, good company, good timing, and good will on the part of the world. Near the end of my career now, I'm trying to be newly good, as opposed to oldly good.