About Arthur A. Levine - Arthur A. Levine Books

About Arthur A. Levine

I was born in Queens, New York in 1962 and grew up in a town called Elmont, on the fringes of the City. For years, as you crossed the border of the town you'd see a sign that said, "Welcome to Elmont, home of the 1977 New York State Lacrosse Champions." It was a big lacrosse town. A big football town too. Not a hugely intellectual town, I'd have to say, but there were exceptions. My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Eleanor Buhrig, was brilliant enough to channel the kids' longing for sports trophies into an incentive for reading. She took bowling trophies that she and her husband had won and put them on a shelf in the room. And she told the class that the first kid to read 100 books (and write reports on them) would get to pick whichever trophy he or she wanted. Then the next kid to reach 30 would get one, and so on. Oh man, a TROPHY for reading. We salivated. I still have a trophy in my basement with the words "Arthur Levine Bowled Down Books" proudly displayed.

Mrs. Buhrig also was the first teacher to encourage my nascent writing and publishing impulses. For some assignment (I've forgotten which), I wrote a book called The Way To A Warlock's House under the pseudonym Betty Crooked. It was a spoof of a recipe book in which "eye of newt" figured strongly. (Eye of newt was the cilantro of the 60's.)

Somehow - did Mrs. Buhrig talk to the local children's librarian? - the book got displayed in the Elmont Public Library Children's Room. For me, a kid who went to the library at least twice a week, this was an ecstatic source of pride. There it was, in the same room as Where The Wild Things Are and Bread And Jam For Frances - a book that I'd created. Some kid might read it, who didn't even know me!! I am pleased to say that I have absolutely never gotten over this feeling.

A lot of stuff has happened between then and now. High School. College. Blah blah blah. But I do think that series of events in the fourth grade was what gave me my life's work. To this day, what I try to do as a publisher is create books that I would have loved as a child�books that I would be thrilled to find displayed in a library alongside Where The Wild Things Are and Bread And Jam For Frances. I suppose I am talking about pride here a little bit - the pride of creating something of lasting value and quality - but more so I'm talking about joy. You know, the sense of joy you get when you enter a really great bookstore, or even visit a friend who has a big wall of gorgeous books, many of which you've wanted to read�.You taste the great reading experience to come. Your eyes tingle at the sight of beautiful jackets and the hints of what treasure they might be covering. You think, "Man, I want these books. ALL of them."

That's what I'm trying to create. Book by book. (I have to say that this is a very useful philosophy for me as a publisher, and a very difficult one for me as a writer. When it's me at the keyboard I am often stymied by my own ridiculously high standards. Even with Anne Lamott's fantastic concept of the "incredibly sh***y first draft," I often stop myself before I even get started. If you are a writer, reading this, be sure you allow yourself the time to get some work down and revise a few dozen times - don't hyper-evaluate yourself before you even get started.) And I like to think it's what has guided me throughout my career in publishing.

I started as Margaret Frith's assistant at G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1984. I tried (unsuccessfully, I have to say) to learn from her marvelous organization and her focus. I also feel I learned a lot from the freewheeling creativity of Nanette Stevenson, the art director. Other wonderful editors working at Putnam at the time inspired me too - I begged Ann Beneduce to let me write reader's reports for her at Philomel. And when Patti Gauch took over from Ann we became fast friends. I had a strong example of author-care in Refna Wilkin (which, again, I know I can never live up to), who never failed to send a review promptly or took too long with a manuscript.

During my time at Putnam I worked on some books that I'm very proud of, some of which are still in print today. I remember the thrill when editor Nora Cohen let me organize the frontmatter for Tomie dePaola's Mother Goose. Later I even had the chance to collect the poems for Tomie to choose in i>Tomie dePaola's Book Of Poems. I was the editor of Rafe Martin and David Shannon's The Rough-Face Girl, Barbara Bottner and Peggy Rathmann's Bootsie Barker Bites, and two other wonderful books by Peggy, Goodnight Gorilla and Officer Buckle And Gloria (which won the Caldecott). I also edited Emily McCully's Mirette On The High Wire, which won the Caldecott in 1993.

In between my two stints at Putnam I also worked at Dial Books for Young Readers, where the stylish Phyllis Fogelman was editor-in-chief and the meticulous and inspiring art director Atha Tehon made everything beautiful. I learned so much from Atha about picture books - how they worked, how they could be edited - and I think we made some truly lovely books there, including The Four Questions by Lynne Sharon Schwartz and Ori Sherman, The Handmade Alphabet by Laura Rankin, and Audrey Wood's Weird Parents. During all this time the publishers I worked for (and the bookstores they sold to) were pretty down on longer fiction for young readers. For the most part there was simply a strong consensus that it "didn't sell." So by necessity, I was almost exclusively an editor of picture books until I became Editor-in-Chief of Alfred A. Knopf books for Young Readers in 1994. There I had the opportunity to edit Jerry Spinelli's Crash and Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and to do some work on Chaim Potok's ZEBRA.

When I launched Arthur A. Levine Books in 1997, the first book we published was Norma Fox Mazer's outstanding novel When She Was Good. In terms of writing quality, this set a very high standard for our novelists, but I'm proud of the group that I've gathered together. They include literary stars like Roddy Doyle, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, and Susan Shreve, as well as fabulous newcomers like Kate Constable and Lisa Yee.

I haven't abandoned my picture book roots though! About fifty percent of the books we do are fully illustrated, and we're proud to be working with a group that includes well-known masters such as Richard Egielski, David Small, P. J. Lynch, and Mary GrandPr�, and talented illustrators at the start of their careers like Ana Juan, Dan Santat, Andy Rash, and Steven D'Amico.

As for me as a writer? Well, Victoria Chess is illustrating my picture book Tooth Trooth to be published soon by Scholastic Press (in time for my son to be interested, I hope!). And I struggle to continue to write enough that I never become a frustrated writer.

So that's just a little bit of background on me. There's much more to learn about the imprint and our books on the rest of this site. Please feel free to kick back and take a tour.