Remembering Esther Hautzig
I started working at the Central Children’s Room at the Donnell Branch of NYPL around four years ago. While working there I often spoke with author Esther Hautzig, an author and volunteer who dedicated much of her time and energy to the place. Esther was lovely, and I understood her to be an author. What I did not understand was her history, and how it informed her work over the years.
At the age of nine, in 1939, Esther and her family were put on a deportation train by the invading Russian army and shipped to Siberia. This later appeared in her memoir for children, The Endless Steppe. After that she was sent to America and eventually ran the publicity and library services department for the Thomas Y. Crowell Company back in the ’50s and 60s. She wrote even more and she died at the age of 79. She was a friend of many, including author/illustrator Uri Shulevitz.
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As one friend of mine said, "She is the kind of person who’ll never appear in a history of publishing but contributed so much to the children’s books field when it was all librarians and retailers had not yet reared their ugly, Mammon-worshipping, heads."
You can read the SLJ tribute to Esther here.
You may also wish to read a rather fascinating tribute to her by M.B. Goffstein here as well.
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Kirkus, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on BlueSky at: @fuse8.bsky.social
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Wait, what the heck is going on in that Goffstein poem? Is that a true story about Esther Hautzig and the Newbery, and is the statue of Elizabeth Riley I have in my heart crumbling as we speak?
Time for me to run and out and get The Endless Steppe which I’ve somehow missed. Thanks for this and for the oh so intriguing links.
The SLJ tribute is moving. The Goffstein, perplexing.
Roger Sutton tends to know all the good old gossip; I’m interested on his take about the Goffstein poem.
I read The Endless Steppe several times in my childhood, and I think I need to reread it again.
Count me in on being utterly puzzled by the Goffstein poem.
Huh. Weird. I was introduced to Esther Hautzig in Jean Little’s short essay “About Feeling Jewish” included in her collection Hey World, Here I Am! It lists the Endless Steppe and I went right out and read it – amazing.
I read the Endless step when I was young, I’ve never been so hunry in my life. Thanks
Also Hungry
Here too with the hungry.
I need to reread The Endless Steppe — it gets lumped together in my memory with Summer of My German Soldier and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit — aka the holy trinity of books Bat-Mitzvah-aged Jewish girls were forced to read. (Anne Frank, too, of course, but she DIED so that was on a whole other trauma level.) I know I liked all three books but don’t remember the specifics. I should revisit them now, as a mother to Jewish girls who will require traumatization, in the tradition of our people.
I first read Endless Step as a 13 year old, nearly 2 decades ago. The book still holds pride of place on my shelf next to When Hitler stle Pink Rabbit. and it is one of those stories that stays with you forever, especially the words ‘that night the 3 of us cried for our dead’. A few moments ago the story popped into my head so I typed it into google and I found out that she died just a few days ago. The world has lost an amazing writer.
Just a picky: Esther was deported in June, 1941, at the age of 10; NOT in 1939 at the age of nine.
I own a copy of The Endless Steppe and in fact, it was just today that I learned Esther died.