Charlotte Zolotow

Charlotte Zolotow (born Charlotte Gertrude Shapiro; June 26, 1915 – November 19, 2013) was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of many books for children. She wrote about 70 picture book texts.

The writers she edited include Paul Fleischman, Paul Zindel, Mary Rodgers, Robert Lipsyte, and Francesca Lia Block.

Life

Zolotow was born in Norfolk, Virginia. She studied writing with Helen C. White at the University of Wisconsin Madison from 1933 to 1936 and then moved to New York City, where she started at Harper & Bros as secretary to the children's books editor Ursula Nordstrom.

Work

Zolotow's work was published by more than 20 different houses. She was an editor, and later publisher, at Harper & Row (which was called Harper & Brothers when she began to work there, and is now known as HarperCollins). The poem "Missing You" from River Winding appears in Best Friends, a collection of poems, and "People" from All That Sunlight appears in the collection More Surprises (both of these anthologies bear the emblem, "A Charlotte Zolotow Book"). She contributed a story called Enemies, illustrated by Ben Shecter, to The Big Book for Peace where she appears alongside other well-known authors and illustrators including Lloyd Alexander, Steven Kellogg and Trina Schart Hyman.

One of Zolotow's titles most widely held in WorldCat libraries is When the Wind Stops, a picture book edited by Ursula Nordstrom and published in 1962 with illustrations by Joe Lasker. Subsequent editions were illustrated by Howard Knotts (1975) and Stefano Vitale (1995, a revised edition).

Zolotow's 1972 book William's Doll (illustrated by William Pène du Bois), about gender stereotypes, was adapted by composer Mary Rodgers and lyricist Sheldon Harnick for the children's album Free to Be ... You and Me, and then for the subsequent television special.

In 1998, the Cooperative Children's Book Center at UW Madison School of Education (CCBC) inaugurated the Charlotte Zolotow Award, "given annually to the author of the best picture book text published in the United States in the preceding year". (The American Library Association Caldecott Medal is given to the illustrator of an American children's picture book.)

Selected books

Some of Zolotow's picture book writings were revised and several were illustrated more than once. At least two titles (both listed here) were published in three editions with three illustrators. Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, illus. Maurice Sendak (1963) If It Weren't for You, illus. Ben Shecter (1966) Some Things Go Together, couplets by Zolotow, illus. Sylvie Selig (Abelard-Shuman, 1969); illus. Karen Gundersheimer (Crowell, 1983), illus. Ashley Wolff (HarperCollins, 1999) and the UW Madison Children's Book Center (CCBC) with more than 70 "picture book texts".