May Massee

May Massee (May 1, 1881 – December 24, 1966) was an American children's book editor. She was the founding head of the juvenile departments at Doubleday from 1922 and at Viking Press from 1932. Before working at Doubleday, she edited the American Library Association periodical Booklist.

Biography

Early life May Massee was born on May 1, 1881, as the third of five children to Charlotte and Francis Massee in Chicago. Before attending school, she learned to read and became interested in drawing and painting through the illustrations of the books. When she was five, her family moved to Milwaukee where she attended the public schools. She graduated from high school at the age of sixteen and attended the state normal school there for two years before teaching elementary school for a year.

Career Massee worked with a librarian for some time in Wisconsin before attending the Wisconsin Library School in Madison. She worked in several libraries until she was encouraged to work in the children’s room of the Buffalo Public Library. This experience deepened her understanding and love of children through the way they responded to the books, and was foundational to her later career as an editor teaching her to always keep in mind the end reader in the process. Each summer, she also took a trip to teachers' college summer schools to present children's books to school superintendents and teachers who had very little of children's literature. While she enjoyed this work, she accepted the tempting offer to become editor of Booklist forcing her to move back to Chicago in 1913. As the editor for Booklist, she was first to go to New York to talk to publishers about upcoming books, and have full-time staff reviewers. Her role overlapped publishing, book-selling, and library work which developed close relationships between publishers and librarians.

At the 1920 American Library Association (ALA) Conference in Colorado Springs, she reported that she would be working with Mabel Williams, a librarian at the New York Public Library (NYPL), to edit and grade approximately 600 children's books, titles concerning children for teachers, and expressed the need for a high-quality list of high school level books.

Influence

Many of the books Massee edited won prestigious children's literary awards. More than twenty were runner-up for the annual Caldecott Medal from the children's librarians, which recognizes the year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". Her motto was "Nothing too much, not even moderation." She often encouraged her authors to try new things and experiment with their stories and illustrations. Willing to take risks, she helped to establish high critical standards for children’s literature. She published books that were not considered popular: books with minority protagonists, stories set in Russia, Hungary, etc. Critics acknowledged Massee’s ability regarding text, design, and illustration as well as her endorsement of new methods of production such as offset lithography. Several books published by Massee have since become classics, such as The Story About Ping (1933), The Good Master (1935), The Story of Ferdinand (1936), Madeline (1939), and Make Way for Ducklings (1941). She was one of the first to publish stories about African-American children written or illustrated by African-American writers and artists.

Awards and legacy In 1950, she received the Constance Lindsay Skinner Medal from the Women's National Book Association for "achievement in the realm of books."

The May Massee Collection highlights the solidity, scope, continuity, and quality of her work. It was formed by colleagues and friends of Massee, including Margaret Lesser Foster, Robert McCloskey, and Elizabeth Gray Vining, in 1967 and donated to what is now Emporia State University in 1972.