Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 09/01/2023 Gr 2–5—Kephart writes worshipfully of Ursula Nordstrom, an only child whose parents divorced when she was quite young. Nordstrom was a quiet, imaginative reader who ended up at boarding school (an experience she recreated in The Secret Language). Afterwards, she was too poor for college and went to work at a publishing house. Upon transferring into the department for young readers, she was eventually promoted to run the place. Bristol's stylized, almost Gothic portraits of Nordstrom amplify the lingering melancholy of Kephart's telling; included are reports of Nordstrom's laughter and pleasure in the many books that so delighted child after child, but the general mood is one of a solitary soldier, bringing out the best in her troops, demanding, yelling, insisting, coaching, and working long into the night to do it. For educators and other adults reading along, there will be the game of picking out familiar book covers, writers, illustrators, and names that appear in these pages; Nordstrom had true reach and a lasting impact on the field in books that are in print today. Her retirement to the country with her partner Mary Griffith is noted; an author's note and resources follow. VERDICT A full life through a picture book keyhole, this is a well-done and rare glimpse of book publishing few children see, and a career path that turns serendipity, acute intelligence, and hard work into what only seems like fate.—Kimberly Olson Fakih - Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 08/08/2023 *Starred Review* Dedicating her tale to the sort of children who “dare to love” books, Kephart celebrates the life and achievements of a renowned editor who shepherded game-changing classics, from Goodnight Moon to Where the Wild Things Are, and John Steptoe’s Stevie into the hands of readers. Nordstrom’s values (“Children want to feel seen”) and her forceful personality (“Not good enough for you,” she would note on a manuscript) both come through clearly as the author sketches out “years upon years of an interesting life, a meaningful, bold, and brave life,” from childhood and schooling to retirement (with Mary Griffith, “the woman she loved), and then closes with a more personal tribute to her “ferociously engaged” relations with authors and illustrators. Her legacy is vividly illuminated in Bristol’s scenes of a self-confident figure with a strong, direct gaze greeting a tentative E. B. White here, shooting off letters to Margaret Wise Brown and Crockett Johnson there, or more fancifully drifting on a boat with young Maurice Sendak past the land of the Wild Things or kicking through symbolic autumn leaves, at the end, beneath a swirl of instantly familiar covers: Harriet the Spy, Little Bear, Harry the Dirty Dog, and others. What was the secret of her success? “I am a former child, and I haven’t forgotten a thing.” - Copyright 2023 Booklist.