Cover Reveal & Q&A: Books Good Enough For You – A Talk with Nancy Hudgins about Ursula Nordstrom

When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer, but I talked myself out of it, figuring that it wasn’t a practical enough job. And since I loved books, the only other option I could even conceive of pursuing was “librarian”. It’s all worked out well enough for me, but it also occurs to me that a kid might benefit from seeing a wider range of literary occupations out there and available. Jobs like, say, editing. But if you were trying to entice kids with editorial works and wonders, how would you begin? And with whom?

That’s where Nancy Hudgins comes in.

I’ll confess that when she initially told me that she was writing a middle grade nonfiction title on Ursula Nordstrom, the late, great editor of more children’s book classics than I can name, I was skeptical. How, precisely, does one make the life of an editor interesting to a child reader? Turns out, it really helps if the subject in question is sardonic, smart, and has connections to everything from Charlotte’s Web to Stevie.

Today, we’re going to premiere the cover of Books Good Enough for You (out March 24, 2026), but not until I’ve asked Nancy a few questions first.:

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Betsy Bird: Nancy! Thanks so much for talking to me today about your latest! Now, the inherent difficulty in this book is getting kids to care about not an author and not an illustrator, but an editor. She may be the most famous children’s book editor in the history of American publishing, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy making her likeable and understandable to kids. How did you tackle this problem? And how do you make an editor’s life not only understandable to kids but inspirational and interesting?

Nancy Hudgins: What first attracted me to Ursula was her sense of humor, and I wanted kids to get a sense of it, too. She was funny and fun! I quoted her extensively, because I wanted to bring her voice into the story.

The title BOOKS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU comes from Ursula. She wanted to publish books that were fresh, original and honest, saying, “Anything less is not good enough for a child.” Her life’s work became making books Good Enough For You, the Reader. In this book of stories, I chose to tell this story about Ursula at the start—because it says everything about Ursula’s philosophy. She was always on the side of kids, who she thought of as vibrant and open and imaginative.        

Most kids will know at least one of the books Ursula edited. I wanted to describe her career by highlighting 16 of those books. The origin stories of these classic books were fascinating to me. I decided to pull back the curtain on their creation because I thought that might appeal to kids, too.

And I also had this hope that maybe, if I could write it well enough, some kids would absorb takeaways for their own writing and revising.

BB: Entirely possible. So tell us a bit about the research you put into this book. Obviously, you had her letters to work with from DEAR GENIUS, edited by Leonard Marcus. Where else did you go to find out more info on Ursula?

Nancy: I started with DEAR GENIUS, which I loved, and then I tried to read every book, article or interview about Ursula that Leonard Marcus included in his bibliography, as well as doing my own independent research. I Googled “Leonard Marcus papers” and discovered that his research and associated writings for DEAR GENIUS were held in the archives at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. So, I went to the Beinecke, where I found additional letters from Ursula. It was so fun to read even more letters from her.

Originally, I wrote Ursula’s story as a picture book, but I just couldn’t get it right. When news of Beth Kephart’s wonderful GOOD BOOKS FOR BAD CHILDREN was announced, I started thinking about a middle-grade book. I realized this format would give me much more room to tell the stories behind the books she edited. I scoured Publisher’s Weekly, JStor and newspapers.com, as well as books about the authors and illustrators of the iconic books I chose to write about.

BB: You mention relatively early on in the book the fact that Ursula was in a relationship with a woman for most of her life. This is the sort of detail that would have gotten overlooked in the past in a biography for kids. I like that you don’t save that detail for the end of the book or anything like that. Tell me a little bit about this decision and the advantages of making Ursula’s loves clearer earlier.

Nancy: From my research I realized Mary Griffith was an important part of Ursula’s life. I tried to weave her in where she might naturally appear. I didn’t highlight the relationship, because the focus of the book is on books, but I didn’t want to ignore it. No one works all the time, and Ursula went home to Mary.  And there were details I loved about their relationship—like the fact that she relied on Mary’s fashion sense when buying clothes. I wanted to provide a fuller picture of Ursula.

BB: I like how you break up the book as well. You have these little interstitial moments between chapters that are a lot of fun. One for example, might be about the Easter eggs that people (like Maurice Sendak) hide in their books. Was this always something you intended to do with the book or did the idea come later?

Nancy: I had the idea for sidebars from the start, but I didn’t have the vision to make them stand out the way Melissa Nelson Greenberg, the art director, and Aura Lewis, the artist, did. This book has been a wonderful collaboration.

I didn’t think of the Easter-egg sidebar until I read about Sendak’s scattering of them through IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN. Then, of course, I had to find them for myself! I thought kids might enjoy that challenge, too.

As a new author, I picked up on several approaches to writing from reading Ursula’s letters, so I summarized them in “Writing Tips from Ursula.” Also, I think of Ursula as a role model, so I wanted to suggest to kids that she could be a role model for them, too, which is why I wrote the sidebar “Be Like Ursula.”

BB: If your book has an antagonist then it has to be good old Anne Carroll Moore, the singular librarian of New York Public Library. Ah, Miss Moore. She’s such a feisty old lady in these stories. So you have her hating on Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, as well as putting down Ursula’s credentials as someone capable of writing for kids (self-reported, no doubt, by Ursula herself). But you also do make mention of some of the good that Moore did as well. I always am a little bit in danger of being an Anne Carroll Moore apologist myself, so how did you go about balancing the problematic Moore with the one who got kids into New York Public libraries in the first place?

Nancy: I know! An enigma, right?

I struggled with this, too. Initially, I had a sidebar about Moore, trying to be more even-handed, even though I had taken Ursula’s side and took umbrage at Moore in the original manuscript. After discussing it with my first editor, Amy Novesky, I realized it was only fair to weave Moore’s early career as a pioneer children’s librarian into the manuscript, too. You can still see a vestige of my bias, though. I think I called all the people I wrote about by their first name. I called her Miss Moore. I just couldn’t bring myself to call her Anne!

BB: Well, to be fair, even Ursula just called her ACM. It occurs to me that you’re publishing this book, with stories about the censorship of things like IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN, at a time in America when children’s books are falling under a conservative scrutiny the likes of which we’ve never seen before. What then does BOOKS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU have to say to the current climate of children’s literary publishing in the late 2020s?

Nancy: Keep writing the truth. Keep publishing the truth. I’m happy Abrams agrees.

Ursula knew IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN would be controversial, yet she published it in 1970 anyway. When it was altered, she spoke out forcefully against censorship. The Constitution hasn’t changed since 1970. The First Amendment still stands. Government censorship is still unconstitutional.

I’m with Ursula. If private citizens choose not to read a book or offer it to a child, that’s their business. People are allowed to have differences of opinion. If they try to use the government to prevent other children from reading it, that crosses a line. The Government shouldn’t be allowed to tell you what you can’t read. Children need to know that.

BB: Tell us a little bit about the editing in this book. You mention in your Author’s Note that it was a very different book in its first form. What changed during the editing process?

Nancy: So many people helped me with the writing of this book. I don’t think we have enough time here to thank them all, though I tried to do so in my Author’s Note.

I was lucky to have two editors. Amy Novesky at Cameron Kids acquired the book on the book proposal and did the first edit, helping me shape the book. Then Abrams took on the project and Courtney Code has been meticulously and cheerfully steering me through more shaping, more editing and all the rest of the process. Their input was instrumental in making the book better. I also had the luxury of time to keep polishing it myself.

Ursula thought that openness to revision was important to good writing. I was hoping by saying revising helped my book get better, young readers would think more expansively about revisions to their own writing.

BB: Aura Lewis provides a lot of the interior art, as well as the cover. Did you see the book as illustrated when you first worked on it? How do you feel about the final product?

Nancy: I am so happy with Aura’s art! She got into the spirit of fun I was trying to convey. And I laughed out loud when I saw her illustration for the chapter about IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN! Kudos to her! Her art elevates the book.

BB: Finally, what’s next for you? What else are you up to these days?

Nancy: I’m currently working on two nonfiction projects about librarians—one for middle grade and one a picture book. I don’t want to jinx them by being more specific, but I’m bursting to tell these stories.

And, bocce season has just started. And, my rescue dog, Buddy, while getting old, is still hanging in.

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Many thanks to Nancy for taking the time to answer my questions today. And for those of you curious about that cover I alluded to…

Books Good Enough for You is, as I mentioned before, out March 24, 2026. Abrams says, it offers a “powerful defense of a child’s right to read.” Sounds like something we could all use a little more of these days.

Filed under: Interviews