At the last minute I decided to move to New York. That’s what brought me to New York and it was the right decision for me.
Because I didn’t know anything about children’s books, I was talking to friends of mine about what I was gonna do, how I was gonna learn about children’s books at this point as a college graduate without any education in children’s literature, and a friend told me that a mutual friend of ours had worked at this children’s book store called Eeyore’s Books for Children on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and that would be a good place for me to learn about children’s books.
I thought that was a great suggestion and I went to the store and there was a little sign in the window that said, “Experienced sales person wanted. Must have an extensive knowledge of children’s literature.” I knew like Green Eggs and Ham and Where the Wild Things Are and that was about it. But I kind of went in with a big smile and introduced myself to the manager, and he gave me a quiz that he gave all perspective employees and I totally failed it.
He could see how sort of heartbroken I was and he said, “Well, just go out and study and learn some books and come back,” which I found out later he actually told to a lot of people and no one ever came back. But I came back. I went out and studied and I was able to name a few more. I think the fact that I came back impressed upon him that this was something I was serious about. And so he hired me. His name is Steve Gack and he was the manager at this store at the time and he’s now an editor at Green Willow and he’s really fantastic.
He grew up in a children’s book store so he knew everything about children’s literature. Everyday he would send me home with bags of books, and that was really my education in children’s literature because Steve has amazing taste. He knows everything. I would go home with all of his favorite books and then I would read all of these books because, you know, customers would come in they’d be like, “Oh, I’m looking for that book and there’s, you know, the highway, and there’s a house.”
We’d be like, “You’re looking for The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. That’s right over there.” So we really had to know what the books were and we had to be able to recommend books. Reading those hundreds and hundreds of books over the first couple of months while I was there showed me what children’s literature was capable of.
I remembered this project I had done in school about a kid who gets to meet Houdini. It wasn’t written for kids originally, but I found it in my closet and rewrote it and added some pictures and showed it to Steve just because I wanted his opinion because he knew everything and was really smart.
He really liked it and he said, “Oh, you know, my girlfriend is the Manhattan sales rep for Random House. Would you like me to show it to her?” And I said, “No, I didn’t know that and that would be great.” And he showed it to her and in the meantime I sent it out to a bunch of different publishers. The editor at Random House really liked it and said she would publish it. So the book came out while I was working still at the Eeyore’s Books for Children.
So it was very fun to be a book seller and having a book for sale in the store. Customers would come in and say they were looking for a good book for a 10 year old and I’d say, “Oh, I happen to have the perfect book right here, The Houdini Box by Brian Selznick.” So it was being at that store and reading all of those books that really got me jump started and got me understanding what you can do between the covers of a book.
