It was a luminous late summer afternoon, befitting a luminary of children’s literature. Publisher Frances Starbuck Foster, who died on June 8, 2014, was remembered in a memorial service held September 17 at the New School Auditorium in New York City. Foster’s personal and professional impact on the children’s book community was evident from the number of individuals in attendance to celebrate her life as a publisher, editor, and mentor.

Children’s book historian Leonard S. Marcus reflected on Foster’s versatile career in children’s publishing, one that would lead her to nurture the careers of such authors and artists as Peter Sís, Leo Leonni, and Louis Sachar. Marcus cited Foster’s “fearlessness as a publisher,” attributing her fortitude to her family’s legacy of artists, wordsmiths, and “Nantucket sailors named Starbuck, no less.” Marcus described Foster as an “individualistic” editor, whose approach was “minimally invasive” and “gentle but firm.” In other words, “it took a moment before the arrow struck home.” As an individual who was “completely at home with herself,” he said, she allowed authors and artists to feel the same. In her gracious way, she steered a writer to discover “what you had meant to write all along.”

Friend and long-time neighbor Jinx Roosevelt spoke movingly about Foster and the ways in which she “expanded my consciousness of language.” In Foster’s lexicon, words, so carefully chosen in speech or in print, meant possibilities. The way Foster said the word “crisp” always stood out to Roosevelt; it was as though the word took on multiple dimensions when she uttered it. Other phrases of Foster’s were distinctive, such as her: “Well, but…” To Roosevelt, this phrase came to signify Foster’s reaching toward the hidden potential of a writer, artist, or a story, to the discoveries that might lie beyond. After her stroke, Roosevelt said, “she lost the gift of language... she was not the real Frances.” And yet, some of her “compelling physical presence” and spirit remained.

To conclude, Roosevelt shared an anecdote about Foster. As with her authors, Foster’s encouragement of creative enterprise was in full force during her daughter’s upbringing, Roosevelt said. She recalled a time she and Frances discovered that a young Kate had found a crayon and drawn orange circles on the wall above her crib. “Oh, Kate! You’re making orange circles! Tell me about your orange circles!” was Foster’s response. Roosevelt frequently shares the story with her college students, as an example of positive “educational intervention,” not to mention a “seminal experience for me.”

Following Sue Stockton’s reading of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life, Peter Sís took the podium. While, to Sís, his books have always served as his “map of life,” Foster became an “inspired, guiding, and protecting” cartographer, a true Starbuck to his sometimes impetuous Ahab. Once, when he was tempted to walk away from a book in anger, Foster responded: “It is difficult if not impossible [for me] to stop believing in its potential.” She went on to say that abandoning the project would only provide Sís “a false sense of relief that will come back to haunt you.” Foster fortified the “books of dreamers and seeker,s” Sís said, and she served as a “beacon of light” for him, leading him and his work back on course. “[She was] a person full of light,” he reiterated.

After a slide show, featuring many images of Foster and her family, Foster’s daughter, Kate Foster-Anderson, shared her deeply moving memories of her mother. While Kate may have once scrawled circles on the wall of her bedroom in orange crayon, today “my pencil feels like lead,” she said. Yet, her mother taught her that “words can be magical and it’s worth the time to find the right thing to say.” Though she said her mother may not have approved of the photographs in the slide show per se (she did not like most pictures taken of her), the images reflected “a life well lived.” And Kate said she knew Foster would have been overjoyed at the many people in attendance.

After her mother suffered her stroke, Kate was reminded of how many lives she had touched. And how often she heard the expression: “You don’t understand, Kate, she’s like a mother to me.“ In fact, she knew just what it felt like. “She was easy to share,” she said. “Her interest in all people was genuine. I don’t know how she found the time.” She spoke about her mother’s “razor-sharp, crisp” wit,” and described her mother and father as “a great and harmonious pair.” Foster truly loved her job, Kate said, and her office existed in a state of perpetual “orderly confusion.” Yet Foster would always be able to locate a certain author’s work, pulling out and displaying the books anytime he or she was coming for a visit.

Kate reflected on one of the last honors that Foster received in 2012 before her stroke: an Eric Carle Honor for her role as a publishing mentor. To celebrate Foster and the occasion, individuals who had worked with her over her more than 60 years in publishing compiled a collection of reflections about what Foster meant to them. And what more fitting a tribute than to find just the right words to describe their mentor? Many of the words came up repeatedly, Kate observed. Among them: intelligent, grace, elegant, poised, subtle, warm, and nurturing.

A mentor to so many, what did Foster mean to the daughter she so enthusiastically encouraged to draw orange circles on her wall? “Everything,” Kate said.