Last week, a piece by Ruth Graham at Slate ignited a debate about whether Y.A. literature is a worthwhile pursuit for adult readers. The passionate arguments that have been made on both sides called to mind a piece by Jill Lepore, which also takes up questions of reading and suitability. “The Lion and the Mouse,” which was published in the magazine six years ago, is about the behind-the-scenes controversy over the publication of E. B. White’s children’s classic “Stuart Little,” and how it helped to transform the publishing world’s notion of what kinds of books were appropriate for young minds.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the librarian Anne Carroll Moore oversaw all of the children’s programming for the New York Public Library. As Lepore notes, her opinion held great sway over children’s-book authors, and over the industry at large. But Moore also had strict rules for what she considered appropriate reading material for children. She preferred a style of children’s literature, which some, including White, found to be mawkish and condescending. In early 1945, White’s editor, Ursula Nordstrom, sent Moore a galley of “Stuart Little,” but the powerful librarian, who had previously encouraged White to publish the book, was appalled by the unusual nature of White’s protagonist. Lepore writes:

[Moore] summoned Nordstrom to her rooms at the Grosvenor Hotel, where she warned her that the book “mustn’t be published.” To the Whites she sent a fourteen-page letter, predicting that the book would fail and that it would prove an embarrassment, and begging the author to reconsider its publication. Exactly what the letter said, and even to whom it was addressed, is much disputed. The Whites threw it away—in disgust, Katharine said—and only six pages of an incomplete copy in Moore’s hand survive. But even in this expurgated version Moore’s criticisms were severe: the story was “out of hand”; Stuart was always “staggering out of scale.” Worse, White had blurred reality and fantasy—“The two worlds were all mixed up”—and children wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

Neither Nordstrom nor the Whites bought into Moore’s idea that literature for children had to be carefully regulated lest it confound or bewilder developing minds. White heartily rejected the notion that children’s writing needed to adhere to strict guidelines or, as he put it, be governed by “rules as inflexible as the rules for lawn tennis.” When “Stuart Little” was published, in October of 1945, some librarians, presumably following Moore’s lead, refused to stock it. But the gates guarding the pristine world of children’s literature had been opened, and, some twenty years later, Maurice Sendak, another writer edited by Nordstrom, would also challenge people’s perceptions of what constituted “suitable” material for young people.

Lepore’s piece is a reminder that the conventions governing who should read what have always been subjects of contention. It’s available to everyone in our online archive.

Illustration by Ian Falconer.

Erin Overbey is the chief archivist of The New Yorker. She has been an archivist at the magazine since 1995.

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