Death of E. B. White, 1985

"I was never so disappointed in a book in my life," said Anne Carroll Moore, when she read the galleys of E. B. White's first children's book. "I fear Stuart Little will be very difficult to place in libraries and schools over the country."

A single bad review of a book does not necessarily doom it, of course. But in this case, Moore's opinion spelled disaster. Anne Carroll Moore was the former children's librarian of New York Public Library, a noted reviewer of children's literature, and arguably the most influential person in the field of juvenile literature in the country.

Elwyn Brooks White was 46 years old when Stuart Little was published in 1945, but his early years had not been idle ones. After graduating from Cornell University (where he co-edited The Cornell Daily Sun,) he wrote for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times, as well as working briefly in advertising. By 1924, he had moved to New York, and had his first article published by The New Yorker magazine in 1925.

Two years later, White joined the staff of The New Yorker, and continued his association with the magazine until his death in 1985. He was best known for his "Notes and Comments" pieces, unsigned essays that helped establish the magazine's literary reputation, and for his "Newsbreaks," short, clever comments on various strangely-worded items from various published sources. He also was a columnist for Harper's Magazine for five years in the late 1930's and early 1940's.

But always, whatever else he was doing, White had a story in the back of his mind. It was a story about a little boy who was a mouse -- or a mouse-like little boy -- named Stuart Little. From his childhood, White had been intrigued by mice. He had a pet mouse. He wrote a poem (and won an award) about a mouse when he was nine. He even thought he looked a little like a mouse himself. In about 1922, while taking a trip by train, White fell asleep and dreamed about a mouse who was "nicely dressed, courageous, and questing."

White had many, many nieces and nephews, who all wanted him to tell him stories about a mouse. White wasn't quite sure about that, however, so he demurred, telling them other tales, and writing down his mouse story when he was alone, squirreling it away in his desk.

Anne Carroll Moore had been busy, too. She had just completed two years of college when her parents died unexpectedly. Orphaned, she now had no hope of completing a law degree, so she decided, instead, to pursue a one-year program in the new field of Library Science at the Pratt Institute Library in Brooklyn.

In 1896, Moore was hired by Pratt to start a children's room there. It was quite an innovative idea, as, at that time, children were not only discouraged from visiting the library, they were often forbidden to do so. Many libraries had a policy that you needed to be at least 14 -- and male -- to become a library patron. Those few librarians that did allow children inside were dismayed by their reading habits: children seemed to gravitate toward the "trashy" books -- novels by the likes of Charles Dickens, James Fennimore Cooper, and Sir Walter Scott.

Moore took her job seriously, and by the time she was done the Pratt library had a separate children's section, complete with child-sized furniture, colorful furnishings, and books appropriate for young readers. She instituted story hours and puppet shows, and trained librarians to work properly with children.

After 10 years, Moore left the Pratt and performed the same type of miracles at the New York Public Library. She made quite a name for herself, and was soon delivering lectures to publishers and booksellers, urging the development of more quality literature for children. She toured the great libraries of Europe on behalf of the American Library Association, and made the acquaintance of such great children's authors as Walter de la Mare and Beatrix Potter, authors whose books she then introduced to American children. She even wrote children's books herself -- rather cutesy, syrupy stories that have not endured well over time.

Moore also began reviewing children's books for the print media. Her columns in The Bookman, the New York Herald Tribune, and The Horn Book Magazine soon made her a foremost authority in children's literature. She took her responsibility seriously, going through the publisher's catalogs and stamping "Not Recommended for Purchase by Expert" on any book that didn't meet her standards.

But there was soon another champion of children's literature on the scene. Her name was Katherine Sergeant Angell White, and she was E. B. White's wife. She was also the first fiction editor for The New Yorker, and was considered a woman of considerable taste and judgment. She had a son and a daughter with White, and another son from a previous marriage, so it was perhaps inevitable that she would become the author of a regular feature in The New Yorker, a column entitled "The Children's Shelf."

In a column published in November, 1938, E. B. White mentioned his wife's pursuits, and musing on the art of writing children's literature, said, "It must be a lot of fun to write for children -- reasonably easy work, perhaps even important work." Reading his column, Anne Carroll Moore took him up on it, urging him to write one of his own.

The two began a correspondence, in which White mentioned that he had started writing a children's book, but that he found it difficult. He was only able to write when he had a fever, he said, and lately, he had been in good health. But Moore was not a woman who gave up easily. She continued to write to White, urging him to finish the work.

Moore's nagging probably had the opposite effect to that she had intended. By November 1939, White's wife wrote to her, telling her politely, "I've decided that the less we say the sooner it will be done." It wasn't until early 1945 that White finished Stuart Little, in a burst of creativity that left him with a finished work in eight weeks.

Moore had a particular reason for wanted the book finished quickly. She was planning to retire, and she wanted to introduce White's book -- in fact, to take credit for "discovering" it -- before she left. Unfortunately for her plans, her retirement came about in 1941, four years before the book was finished.

Anne Carroll Moore was a determined woman, however, and she was not about to let a little thing like that stop her. Although retired, she still attended meetings of the New York Public Library, and usually ran the meetings, even when her successor attempted to foil her by changing the meeting places. ("No matter where you held them, she was there," said Frances Clark Sayers, Moore's successor.) Moore intended that her final triumph would be the publication of White's book, under her approval.

Then she was sent the galleys. It wasn't anything like what she had expected. White's worst offense seemed to be the way he muddled fantasy and reality -- no child would be able to sort all that out. She said it had been written by a sick mind. She wrote to White's editor, Ursula Nordstrom, telling her that it "mustn't be published." She wrote to the Whites -- in a 14 page letter -- predicting the book's utter failure and begging White not to publish it.

Stuart Little was published nonetheless, and Moore's prediction almost came true. Frances Clark Sayers, now Children's Librarian at the New York Public Library and presumably operating on Moore's instruction, used Moore's famous "Not Recommended" stamp and refused to buy the book for the library. Later, the library's director discovered that she had acquired the book, although she kept it hidden away under her desk. When he read it, he was outraged that it had been kept out of circulation, and ordered it placed on the shelves. "[Stuart] got into the shelves of the Library all right," E. B. White would say later, "but I think he had to gnaw his way in."

Stuart Little now slowly began to make progress. It was excluded from the 1946 Newberry Medal Awards, presumably because of Moore's influence. (It didn't even achieve a position as one of the four runners-up.) Once no longer banned by libraries, however, the book began its climb to become one of the most enduring classic children's books. By 2008, according to its publishers, it had sold over four million copies.

E. B. White followed the publication of Stuart Little with another classic children's tale, Charlotte's Web, in 1952, and The Trumpet of the Swan in 1970. He was also co-author/editor of the revised The Elements of Style in 1959, a rework of an earlier publication by one of his former professors, William Strunk Jr. The book, commonly known as Strunk and White, is considered one of the classic books on English composition, and has been judged by Time magazine to be one of the 100 most influential books written in English since 1923.

Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events, 2011 Edition: The Ultimate Go-To Guide for Special Days, Weeks, and Months, Editors of Chase's Calendar of Events; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_1; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Carroll_Moore; "The Lion and the Mouse: The battle that reshaped children's literature," The New Yorker, July 21, 2008.