A Fifth Anniversary for Wendy Lamb Books
By Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly,12/06/2007
Since 2002, Wendy Lamb Books—Random House Children’s Books’ first eponymous imprint—has published 72 middle grade and young adult novels by such notable authors as Patricia Reilly Giff, Gary Paulsen, Christopher Paul Curtis, Walter Dean Myers, Meg Rosoff and Graham Salisbury. The imprint’s books have received 85 starred reviews and more than 100 awards, among them a Newbery Honor, an Edgar Allan Poe Award and a Michael L. Printz Award.
Wendy Lamb.
Lamb began her children’s publishing career in 1974 as a reader for HarperCollins, and then worked at Viking before deciding, she says, “to bail out and run away for a while.” She attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and then wrote for musical theater, but eventually realized “what I really wanted to do was edit children’s books.” After freelancing at Delacorte for a number of years, Lamb started working fulltime at the house in 1996. Commenting that “sometimes change is a good thing,” she notes, Delacorte’s 1999 merger with Random House “brought me wonderful new colleagues. Thinking about the anniversary of my imprint, which Craig Virden [then president of RHCB] established, makes me realize how incredibly supportive everyone here has been, especially Chip Gibson,” now RHCB’s president and publisher.
Reflecting on her role as editor, Lamb says she finds “publishing for children and finding that special spot for them... an interesting and endless challenge. Basically my job is to get a kid in Tulsa to turn the page. I try to help authors hold that child’s attention in a rewarding way so that he or she wants to keep reading.”
Back in 1995, Lamb published Christopher Paul Curtis’s first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, after the author submitted the manuscript to a Delacorte fiction contest. “The book didn’t meet the requirements to win the contest,” Curtis recalls, “but you can’t imagine my thrill when I received a call from Ms. Lamb stating that the company was going to publish the book anyway. In effect she started my career as a writer. The novel had already been rejected by one publisher, and if Delacorte had said, ‘no thanks,’ I would have gotten the idea and would not have submitted the book anywhere else. Having the absolutely unbelievable luck of Wendy being my first editor has been the blessing of my writing life.” Watsons went on to win a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor, and Curtis subsequently won the 2000 Newbery Medal for Bud, Not Buddy.
Among the qualities Curtis admires in his editor, he says, “is her ability to quickly get to the heart of a story. I have a tendency to overwrite and over-explain and Wendy has shown me what’s important and what’s puffery. I think being an editor has to be one of the most difficult, underappreciated jobs on the face of the earth. Not only must the editor be able to improve on an author’s writing, she must also be able to tell each writer she works with how her idea can improve the story. I bet Wendy has handled this [task] with such grace and aplomb that each of her authors thinks he or she is Wendy’s favorite author.”
Looking down the road, Lamb doesn’t foresee any significant changes in the shape or size of her list. “There is a limit to how many books I feel I can do well,” she says. “My editing process is labor-intensive and I don’t know any secrets or shortcuts. I am lucky to have a wonderful assistant editor, Caroline Meckler.”
Among the forthcoming titles Lamb is excited about publishing are Giff’s Eleven, a middle grade mystery for next spring; and two YA novels due next summer, How to Build a House by Dana Reinhardt and Would You by Marthe Jocelyn.
Gibson praises Lamb for her list’s “lovely balance of titles—in near equal measure award-winning and commercially successful. That she is charming, funny, caring and uniquely generous in sharing her knowledge, experience and talent secures her place as beloved colleague, both at RHCB and throughout the publishing world."
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| Submitted by: | Polly Wagner 3/19/2009 2:01:08 PM PT |
| Location: | Peoria, Illinois |
| Occupation: | Library asst. ( Teacher aide) |
Hi,
I caught your publishing name off a list of Rebecca Caudill 2010 nominees. My maiden name was Lamb. Any relation?:)
I have a daughter who wants to be a author. Any advice? She is 17 and plans on going into creative writing in college.
Thank You,
Polly Wagner
Peoria, Illinois
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