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Publishers Weekly Children's Features

McElderry Gives New Life to Old Favorites
Shannon Maughan -- 8/3/98

Shrewbettina's Birthday and Creepy Castle, two wordless picture books by the late British illustrator John S. Goodall (1908-1996), reissued this fall by Margaret K. McElderry Books, are proof that good things do indeed come in small packages. The diminutive books feature the exploits of some bright-eyed woodland mice and shrews, denizens of the English countryside depicted in Goodall's delicately rendered watercolors.

But the real story lies in the books' clever design. Goodall alternated full and half pages, which function as flaps. The effect gives each spread double duty; readers can change the action of the characters in a scene by turning the half-page while much of the background remains the same. The first of the books was published in the late 1960s, and Goodall created new titles intermittently, for almost 20 years.

Out of print for more than a decade, the books would have been lost forever if not for happenstance and the support of publisher Margaret K. McElderry and Brian Kelleher, head of field sales for the Simon &Schuster Children's Group. "When I began publishing Goodall's books at Harcourt [in the 1960s and 1970s], I simply loved them," McElderry said. "It was also a time when our society was becoming conscious of inner-city children and their often bad home environment. To my astonishment, these books had a special use with inner-city children. Kids would look at them and begin to be able to express themselves, to verbalize." In the late 1980s, after McElderry's imprint moved to S&S following the purchase of Macmillan, the Goodall books went out of print.

Though the books may have been unavailable for a long time, they were not forgotten. "We had lots of letters from people asking about them over the years," McElderry said. "People remembered the books and loved them." But it was sheer coincidence that McElderry was recently reminded of the Goodall books. "Two or three years ago we had our sales conference on Coronado Island [near San Diego]," she recalled. "Christian Esquivan, the Coronado Island librarian, collects children's books and had some of Goodall's books on display at the library." McElderry was admiring them when Kelleher inquired, "What are these?" After McElderry explained the beloved books' history, the decision was quickly made to reissue them. "[Goodall] had a real sense of what children liked," she said. "I believe the books are totally legitimate for our times."

But the technical end of the books' renaissance proved a bit trickier. "We had one heck of a time finding what to print from," McElderry said. "Some film was with a printer in Italy, and Gallimard had reissued these books a few years ago, with words, which d sn't work very well. There were pieces of film floating around everywhere. We've got everything together now, but it was a puzzle and a bit of a nightmare, though it was interesting," she said with a laugh.

The initial two titles, which will be released in September, will be followed by two more in both spring and fall of 1999. The books are being copublished with Ragged Bears in the U.K. "It's ghastly when you yourself love something and it g s out of print," McElderry concluded. Happily, McElderry's and many readers' sentiments have prevailed and given a handful of titles new life.
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