Ursula Nordstrom, the trailblazing Harper & Row editor who helped shape some of the most iconic and beloved children’s books of the 20th century, takes the spotlight herself in a new book for young readers: Books Good Enough for You by Nancy Hudgins (Abrams, Mar. 24). In this exclusive excerpt, Hudgins offers a look inside the making of Maurice Sendak’s picture book In the Night Kitchen, showing how Nordstrom championed the book and its creator in the face of censorship—a potent reminder that the fight for the freedom to read is not new.

In the Night Kitchen

Whenever Maurice Sendak had glimmerings of a new book, Ursula was all ears. That’s why she was standing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at an exhibit Maurice had recommended. Panels of Winsor McCay’s comic strip, Little Nemo, which McCay had created in 1905, were on display. Ursula could see why Maurice was so excited about McCay’s art. It was done in the Art Nouveau style of that time, and the comic strips were fun.

Maurice admired McCay’s Little Nemo drawings, some of which he had seen in various places, but he’d never seen them all in one place until he saw them at the Met. Maurice realized he and McCay both worked with the emotional memory of their childhoods and neither had forgotten their childhood dreams.

Three years later, Maurice wrote a story about a boy he named “Mickey,” after his childhood hero, Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was “born” the same year as Maurice, and Maurice’s affection for Mickey lasted all his life. Growing up, he’d chewed Mickey Mouse gum and brushed his teeth with Mickey Mouse toothpaste. Maurice said Mickey was “the little brother I always wanted.” In his story, Mickey has a dream, falls into cake batter, kneads dough into an airplane, and flies off on a quest to find milk for the bakers. Although he then falls into the milk, he saves the day in the end!

Before he met Ursula, Maurice thought he wanted to draw comic books when he grew up. He adopted a comic book style for this story. He was playful, writing and illustrating the book. He took inspiration from pop culture, including the movies from his childhood like Fantasia, starring Mickey Mouse, and the many movie comedies starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Maurice’s three bakers are caricatures of Oliver Hardy. Maurice painted the New York City skyline, but with cartons of food and kitchen utensils as a backdrop. He paid tribute to those closest to him, sprinkling their names throughout the book like Easter eggs.

Unlike Where the Wild Things Are, where Maurice separated the art from the story and placed the text solely on a white background, he now placed all of the text in the art itself. Maurice’s art shows Mickey falling out of bed with his pajamas on, and then falling out of the pajamas and into the cake mix. In the falling scene and some of the scenes that follow, Mickey is not wearing clothes. Ursula saw the logic in publishing it in the way Maurice wanted, but she knew the book would be criticized because this would be the first American children’s book with a naked boy.

Months before Maurice had finished the art for In the Night Kitchen, the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) announced, in early 1970, that Maurice had won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration. The world’s most prestigious children’s book award, it recognizes illustrators whose works have made an important and lasting contribution to children’s literature. Maurice was the first American to win the Award for Illustration. Ursula traveled with him to the Book Fair in Bologna, Italy, in April for the award ceremony.

When Ursula received Maurice’s final art, she turned to her typewriter.

I sit in shimmering happiness over IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN. What a glorious book!

In the Night Kitchen was published in November 1970. Kirkus Reviews said, “...naked and naturally exposed, Mickey is pure joy.” Time magazine’s reviewer called it “cheerful,” and wrote, “when Mickey is floating around in the altogether or wrestling with all that dough, it may even seem hilarious to the under-five set.”

The judges for the New York Times’s Best Illustrated Books of 1970 were unanimous in selecting In the Night Kitchen. Children’s librarians in the American Library Association praised the book, making it one of its 1970 Notable Children’s Books. In January 1971, it won a Caldecott Honor.

But, in February 1971, Shelton L. Root Jr., a professor of education at the University of Georgia, decidedly did not like it. The opening lines of his review in Elementary English were: “If you haven’t read Mr. Sendak’s latest contributions to literature for the very young, borrow a copy and do so. Don’t bother to buy it.”

Ouch. This was not exactly the kind of language Ursula hoped for in a review. She was in the business of selling books. Professor Root found the book “heavy, self-conscious, pointless, and—worst of all—dull.” He appeared to object to Mickey’s nudity as well.

To its credit, Elementary English published a differing viewpoint in November 1971, written by an elementary school teacher on Long Island:

Those worrisome critics who are [affected by] seeing the body beautiful will tear their hair and gnash their teeth. But, isn’t it easier to fall from sleep into the night kitchen without clothes... especially if one falls into a bowl of dough? How else would one dive into a bottle of milk?

Negative reaction to the book escalated. A librarian in Caldwell, Louisiana, wrote a letter to School Library Journal, which it published in December 1971:

Maurice Sendak might faint but a staff member of Caldwell Parish Library, knowing that patrons of the library might object to the illustrations in In the Night Kitchen, solved the problem by diapering the little boys [sic] with white tempera paint. Other librarians might wish to do the same.

It’s not too much of a stretch to suppose Ursula talked with John Donovan, executive director of the Children’s Book Council (and whose book, I’ll Get There... she’d published three years before) about this issue. John, on Children’s Book Council stationery, brought the librarian’s letter about painting pants on Mickey to the attention of the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the American Library Association. On behalf of children’s book publishers, he asked the committee to clarify that intellectual freedom applied to children, too. The Committee voted to begin working on a statement about defacement of library materials.

Ursula was appalled by the painting of pants on Mickey. It was the worst kind of censorship—changing a creative person’s work in an underhanded way and thus presenting the art as something it is not. And she was determined to support Maurice. She lobbied the executives at Harper to make a public statement condemning this act. She then turned to the larger publishing community, asking them to sign a letter against censorship. She wrote a statement in Maurice’s defense and sent it to librarians, authors, illustrators, publishers, and book critics. The response was 425 signatures agreeing with her position.

In June 1972, Harper put out a press release, which included the letter that had been published in School Library Journal and then quoted Ursula’s statement in full:

At first, the thought of librarians painting diapers or pants on the naked hero of Sendak’s book might seem amusing, merely a harmless eccentricity on the part of some prim few. On reconsideration, however, this behavior should be recognized for what it is: an act of censorship by mutilation rather than by obvious suppression.

A private individual who owns a book is free, of course, to do with it as he pleases; he may destroy his property or cherish it, even paint clothes on any naked figures that appear in it. But it is altogether a different matter when a librarian disfigures a book purchased with public funds—thereby editing the work of the author—and then presents this distortion to the library’s patrons.

The mutilation of Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen by certain librarians [sic] must not be allowed to have an intimidating effect on creators and publishers of books for children. We, as writers, illustrators, publishers, critics, and librarians, deeply concerned with preserving the First Amendment freedoms for everyone involved in the process of communicating ideas, vigorously protest this exercise of censorship.

Her statement was direct and to the point. An assault on one person’s freedom of expression was an assault on all.

Ursula was not finished. The American Library Association’s annual convention was scheduled to start in Chicago two weeks later, on June 25. She took her cause there as well. There was talk among the attendees about censorship. One Chicago librarian said she’d been reading the book to mothers and children since its publication two years before and had never heard a negative word about Mickey’s nakedness.

The ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee worked on the issue for several months. In February 1973, the ALA adopted a new interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights. It stated that altering a work denies “access to the complete work and full ideas that the work was intended to express,” and quoted its Library Bill of Rights: “No library materials should be proscribed or removed from libraries because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

Even after Ursula retired, book challenges continued about Mickey’s nudity, with mixed results. Before the end of the twentieth century, challenges were brought in at least seven states. Unfortunately, a few books were found on library shelves with shorts drawn in.

Freedom of speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, includes freedom of expression—art, for example. Writers and artists have the right to express themselves. People have the right to choose not to buy their books or art. It’s when people start forcing their opinions on others that the fireworks start. When a government agency (such as a library or a school district) alters, restricts, or removes a book, it’s called censorship—and that is unconstitutional.

Robert P. Doyle, past president of the Illinois Library Association, called freedom of speech a “precious” right, which is “vulnerable to erosion.” He noted, “Our freedom is only as secure as we make it.” That’s why Ursula’s crusade was so important.

And on a practical level, Richard Darling, the Dean of Columbia University’s School of Library Sciences and chairman of the Intellectual Freedom Committee, wrote: “The banning of literature will not cure the real ills of our world... When we waste our energy on banning books which reflect the world, we neglect the world’s real problems.”

Book censorship, including mutilation and banning, has escalated in the twenty-first century. Challenges to books start at the local public or school library. Sometimes the disputes end up in court. Some courts have championed a person’s right to read, but some have upheld book bans, limiting readers’ access to books.

Banning of In the Night Kitchen has increased. The book often “makes” the list of 100 Most Banned/Challenged books. Ursula, no doubt, would have been outraged to see a YouTube reading of the book that cuts off, mid-chest, the drawing of Mickey in the last scene. In January 2024, a mother challenged In the Night Kitchen at a school in Florida. The school removed the book from the shelf, only returning it after shorts were drawn on Mickey.

History... repeating itself.

The fight for the right to read continues.

The above excerpt is from Books Good Enough for You: The Storied Life of Ursula Nordstrom, Editor of Extraordinary Children’s Books by Nancy Hudgins. Reprinted with permission by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams. On sale March 24, 2026. Text © 2026 Nancy Hudgins. Illustrations © 2026 Abrams/Illustrations by Aura Lewis. Book design by Melissa Nelson Greenberg.