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Not just a writer, but an extraordinary editor
Side by side with this vibrant writing career, Charlotte had a second
work-life: editing. Known for the superb, insightful, detailed quality of her editing,
she
was the recipient of the Harper Gold Medal Award for Editorial Excellence. She
worked and became friends with many, many children's book writers and
illustrators, inspiring, cajoling, challenging, and encouraging them into doing
some of their best work. See Books CZ Has Edited
to get some idea of this scope.
Editing also brought Charlotte in touch with other professional, but
non-authorial Friends & Colleagues,
among them Bill Morris,
Vice President and
Director of Library Promotion at
HarperCollins Children's Books, and Susan Hirschman, editor
(now retired) of Greenwillow Books.
Some of Charlotte's authors
 Many of her writers have won Newbury or Caldecott Awards, including
Patricia MacLachlan (the cover of Patricia's Sarah, Plain and Tall, is
pictured, left) and Paul Fleischman
(the cover of Paul's Joyful Noise is pictured
right). After seeing a dramatization of The Effect of
Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds on television (it had not then been
produced on Broadway, nor had it yet won a Pulitzer), she sought out its author,
Paul Zindel, feeling certain that here was an original, insightful new voice for
teenagers.
 Zindel had never written a novel, but, Charlotte told the editors of
the book Something about the Author, "... the portrait of the
children was so sympathetic and understanding I saw this man knew how teenagers
feel." Zindel went on to write many best-selling and much-loved young adult
novels, such as My Darling, My Hamburger and The Pigman (cover
pictured left).
Charlotte also edited many writers whose primary careers were not in
writing  for writing for children, and
helped coax out beautiful, strong, or funny work:
Alan Arkin,
Nathanial Benchley, Sylvia Plath (posthumously, working with Plath's
mother) Delmore Schwartz, Judith Viorst, and May
Sarton, among others. Schwartz (two of his book covers are pictured here) was
a well-known poet and short story writer, who was also a personal friend of
Maurice's and Charlotte's --- dating from the days they all went attended the
University of Wisconsin at Madison. Delmore's short story "In
Dreams Begin Responsibilities" was written for an about Maurice and
Charlotte. Years after Delmore's tragic death in the mid-'60's, the couple
remained mindful of the poet. Eventually Charlotte edited his marvelous adult
poem, "I am Cherry Alive," and transformed it into an extraordinary
children's book.
She even worked editorially (as did her friend, and later one of her own
editors, Greenwillow's Susan Hirschman)
on the novel The Secret Language ---
the single published book written by her own beloved first editor and mentor, the redoubtable
Ursula. (Ursula wrote a second novel, a sequel to The Secret Language,
which she read chapters of to Charlotte. Charlotte remembers it as
"Marvelous", but Ursula, unable to complete the last chapter of the
book, burned the manuscript shortly before her death in 1988).
(Read more about Books CZ Has Edited,
including some comments by writers she has worked with over the years.)
Charlotte and Harpers
Charlotte's editing career took place entirely at Harpers. This
distinguished New York City publishing house, founded in 1817, had brought out
the books of Mark Twain, the Bronte sisters, Thackeray, Charles Dickens, John F.
Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and countless other celebrated and
history-changing authors.
Charlotte began working at Harper & Brothers in 1938, as a
 secretary
and stenographer. She was 23 years old. A few years later she began working for
Ursula Nordstrom in the children's book department. She became an editorial assistant,
then an editor, then senior editor. Although she then took time off from the company
for seven years (1944 to 1961) to be with her children when they were young, Charlotte
and
 Ursula stayed in close contact, talking on the phone often, and usually
having lunch together once a week. (The extremely rare picture at left shows
Charlotte at work at her typewriter in 1955, when her young daughter was 3.
Charlotte wrote many of her most loved children's books on this typewriter, in a
corner of her bedroom, with the kids running in and out. The desk is still
there, in the same corner, but now it serves as a vanity table, a big octagonal
mirror suspended above it.)
In 1962, Charlotte returned to
the department, where she remained a senior
editor until 1976. She was then named vice-president and associate publisher of
the Junior Books division (the picture above at right shows CZ in her office at
Harpers about this time; you can see there were lots of her beloved plants even
there. The office, on East 53rd Street, looked out over St. Patrick's Cathedral).
She retained this position until 1981, when she became an in-house
consultant, and was made editorial director of her own imprint,
 Charlotte
Zolotow Books (its sprightly logo, a tulip, is pictured left). After a decade in
this position, she attempted to retire, but Harpers, by now HarperCollins, kept
her own as an editorial consultant for several more years, until Charlotte was
83. This means that her association with the company spanned sixty years. Since
1991 she has been publisher emerita, a title she will keep for life.
To learn more about present-day HarperCollins and the type of books being
published there now, please go to: http://www.harperchildrens.com/hch/
How does a writer edit?
Charlotte's two careers as an editor (and eventually, a publisher) and a
writer, began, in a sense, at the same time: with the pivotal moment when Ursula
Nordstrom accepted The Park Book.
"Out of this", she says, "I learned the difference between
being a writer and being an editor. Being a writer meant you put down what
appealed to you, and no one impinged on you, or tried to make you say anything
you yourself hadn't wanted to say. But as an editor, the opposite was true. You
had to turn yourself off, and enter the world of the writer completely, to help
him or her express his or her own story." Looking back on her many years as
an editor, she recalls, "I had to be very careful, always, when I saw
something wasn't working; the temptation was very often to say how it should be
done, which is death to an author. You've got to let him or her find his own
way, solve his or her own problems."
... and an editor lecture?
Although Charlotte never taught as such, as both a
writer and editor she was frequently asked to give talks, lectures, and
readings, at conferences, meetings, seminars, and workshops. Despite an almost
paralyzing fear of public speaking, she rose valiantly to the occasion, time and
time again. (Above, Charlotte speaking on a writing panel at
the University of Indiana Writers' Conference, circa 1957, microphone in front
of her. To her left is the
freelance magazine writer Dick Gehman, a then-friend of the family). She
spoke many times at the conventions of the American Library Association, the
National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Reading
Association.
A lovely circle
Charlotte has been given many awards
including the University
of Minnesota's 1968 Irwin Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi's 1990 Silver Medallion,
and a 1991 American Library Association
resolution expressing gratitude for her contributions.
 Perhaps
the most meaningful to her, however, is the creation of an award in her name:
the Charlotte Zolotow Award, given annually by the Cooperative Center for
Children's Books (CCBC). The CCBC is based at the University of Wisconsin at
Madison, and is housed in a building named for Charlotte's much-loved writing
professor, Helen C. White.
The award, which includes a cash prize and a gold
medal struck with Charlotte's logo in the middle (see above left),
is given
annually to "to the author of the best
picture book text published in the United States in the preceding year." Concomitant
with the annual awards ceremony, the Charlotte Zolotow lecture is given, at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Since the Charlotte Zolotow Award was
instituted in 1998, lecturers have been Karla Kuskin, Katherine Patterson, and
Jean Craighead George.
"It makes a lovely circle in my life," Charlotte once remarked.
To learn more about it, go The
CZ Awards, on this site, or visit the
CCBC.
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