Two-time winner of both the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award, Katherine Paterson is also a longtime member of the International Board on Books for Young People, and her latest book is a spirited illustrated biography of the organization’s founder. Aimed at middle grade readers and older, Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams, illustrated by Sally Deng, centers on Lepman’s work creating the International Youth Library in Munich in the aftermath of World War II, and the importance of getting books into children’s hands. PW spoke with the veteran author about the challenges of biographical research, Lepman’s work to make peace through children’s literature, and the way books can connect readers across borders.
How did you learn about the work of Jella Lepman and what inspired you to write a biography?
When I first got involved with what used to be called United States Friends of IBBY, I heard about Jella very early on, because she was the venerated founder. The more involved I got, the more I learned about her, and of course, there were a lot of people still alive who remembered her. It was always very interesting to me, because if her name came up, somebody invariably said, “Well, you know, she was a remarkable woman, but she was difficult to work with.” The more I thought about that over the years, I thought, “Yeah, in her time, if you weren’t a difficult woman, you never got anything accomplished. I’ve never heard a man who’s done something remarkable be characterized as difficult, but women who accomplish something are always characterized as pushy or too ambitious.”
I was asked by Christopher Franceschelli, who is on the board of the library that she founded [the International Youth Library in Munich] to write a biography of her, maybe 15 years ago. And, I thought, well, I’ve got to learn more about her. She did a memoir, but she was very close-mouthed about her early life, so the memoir really is about her time after the war when she was asked to go back to Germany, and that’s the part of her life that is best known. Digging deeper and trying to get more information was not easy. I was able to find out that she came from a fairly wealthy Jewish family in Stuttgart and the private school that she went to had been founded some years before for the daughters of royalty, so it was the wealthy and the upper-class people of the city who sent their daughters to this school. I do know that she studied in France. She studied music, and really wanted to become a concert pianist, but her father kiboshed it. I met her granddaughter—which has been a great privilege, because Claudia is just delightful—and I said, “Claudia, did you ever hear your grandmother play the piano?” And she said, “You know, I don’t think she ever played it after her father told her she couldn’t be a concert pianist. I never heard her play it.” Well, Jella turned to her other love, which was books, but you don’t need me to tell you all that.
You’ve been very active in IBBY over the years and I’m curious about how that informed your work on the book. How and when did you get involved with the organization and did you find many people at IBBY who had stories to share about Jella, or was it mostly through the family that you learned about her?
Jella’s dream was that you can make peace through children’s books, and IBBY is a gathering of people who love books for children and want to make sure children get the best books from every country. Unfortunately, our country doesn’t translate many books for children, because we have so many written by American authors or written in English. But it’s a shame because we would get to know other countries better if we actually translated books from other countries and read them.
When I first got into children’s books, I didn’t really know anybody. People didn’t pay much attention to me until after Bridge to Terabithia and that was published in 1977. So it was probably after that when someone at IBBY suggested that I go to one of the Friends of IBBY meetings, and I started attending those fairly regularly. I think my first international IBBY conference was the one in Williamsburg in 1990, and after that I really began trying to go every two years. So I’ve been to quite a number of international meetings, and it’s so wonderful because I have been able to make friends with people from all over the world. I really treasure that.
I’ve learned more about Jella the person from her granddaughter than from anybody else. Claudia shared with me letters that Jella had written to Claudia’s father. The love Jella had for her family—to see this warm heart that other people hadn’t revealed to me at all, and which hadn’t been revealed even in her own book—it was only really reading those letters that I began to feel I was getting to know Jella the person.
What were some of the challenges in writing for younger readers about Jella’s work? In the book you touch on the realities of the war out of which her work emerged. How did you thread that needle?
Well, the most difficult thing was that Jella didn’t talk about her childhood. Even her granddaughter knows very little. I mean, I tell my children and grandchildren stories from my childhood, but she really didn’t seem to have done that. We don’t really know all that much about Jella the child and not a great deal about her family. I kept saying to my editor Christopher Franceschelli [head of Chronicle’s Handprint Books imprint]: “Who is our audience? Is it for children?” And, I think it’s really a book for a wider audience. I don’t think little children are going to read it particularly—I’m not sure it’s a book for little children—but I’d like for young people to read it, because Jella had so much faith in young people. People would say, “Oh, if you let kids in, they’ll just mess everything up,” And she didn’t believe that. She thought the children who came to the library were going to be respectful, and they were. And because these children hadn’t had books during Hitler’s regime, they begged to borrow the books and although they weren’t supposed to borrow the books, she would sort of turn a blind eye and let people know that there was a secret place where you could put the book back and nobody would know you had taken it. I just love that respect she had for children.
You know my books. I don’t see any point in censoring or sugarcoating the truth. War is awful, horrible. It was terrible. I didn’t have to really go into the Holocaust because she, thank God, escaped the worst of it personally. I’m not sure how many people she loved or was related to died, because she didn’t really reveal that.
Why do you think Jella’s story is an important one to tell now? What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
Well, somebody who read it remarked on the fact that the millionaires and industrialists supported Hitler and the common people supported him because he promised to make Germany great again. Democracy is such a fragile thing, and we all really need to be aware. I’m thrilled that China, Japan, and Germany have all signed on to translate the book. That makes me very happy as I hope it’s going to have a wide international audience.
Let me just rave about the format we finally got for the book, because that was one thing holding up publication for a long time: what format would appeal to a wide range of readers. I think Sally Deng, the illustrator, and Sara Gillingham, the art director, have done such a magnificent job of combining the photographs and the original artwork. I just love the book. I am so thrilled with it. When people say, “What message do you want?” I say, “That’s not my job. My job is to write the book. It’s the reader’s job to figure out what the message is for them,” but I wrote the book because I wanted people to know Jella and be inspired by her.
Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams: The Woman Who Rescued a Generation of Children and Founded the World’s Largest Children’s Library by Katherine Paterson, illus. by Sally Deng. Chronicle, $21.99 Feb. 4 ISBN 978-1-4521-8262-9
