GETTING STARTED
A bookshelf filled with some of the wonderful books that followed my first day of work.
Fresh out of college, I landed a job as “assistant to the editor” F. N. Monjo. This dear man was then head of Coward, McCann’s children’s book department.
Early on that first day, he asked what I thought of a picture book.
“It’s nice,” I said.
“Nice!” The word withered as it passed his lips.
“Nice” was banned. (Fourteen years later I said it again.)
Mr. Monjo returned from lunch in an expansive mood. He wondered if I knew Russell Hoban’s Frances books. I didn’t. To educate me, he retold Bread and Jam for Frances, acting out all the parts and reaching his peak on the line, “She liked to practice with a string bean….” If this was work, why had I dreaded it?
The editor-in-chief for the adult department was a tall, flamboyant woman. That afternoon in the ladies room she was describing a meeting she’d just attended. Arm swooping she declared, “We sat there like flies in amber.”
Flies in amber!
Would I get to go to meetings and feel like that? I certainly felt hopeful.
This was the stuff of fiction, and here I was in the midst of it.