 |
|
| Dinah Stevenson | |
Dinah Stevenson, a former children's book editor and publisher at Clarion Books, died January 23. She was 81. In a tribute, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators noted that while Stevenson was earning her degree in English literature from the University of Chicago, she worked part-time for the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. After her first job in publishing as a copyeditor at J.B. Lippincott Books for Young Readers, she moved into editorial work.
When Lippincott was bought by Harper & Row in 1978, Stevenson moved to Knopf Books for Young Readers, then joined Lothrop, Lee, and Shepherd, where she worked with Dorothy Briley. In 1989, Stevenson moved with Briley to Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin (now under the HarperCollins banner). She became Clarion's publisher in 1998.
In her time at Clarion, Stevenson edited many award-winning books, including three Caldecott medal winners: Golem, written and illustrated by David Wisneski (1996); The Three Pigs, written and illustrated by David Wiesner (2001); and Flotsam, also by David Wiesner (2006). She also edited two Newbery medal winners: The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman, whose career she launched with the Newbery Honor-winning Catherine, Called Birdy; and A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park, whose first manuscript she discovered in the slush pile.
When The Three Pigs and A Single Shard won the Caldecott and Newbery medals in 2002, Dinah became one of only three editors whose books were awarded the nation's two highest children's book honors in the same year, the SCBWI noted.
Though she officially retired in 2020, Stevenson continued to work on select editorial projects through the end of last year, including Gary D. Schmidt's The Labors of Hercules Beal, which received multiple starred reviews and appeared several "Best of 2023" lists.
"An eager traveler, Dinah maintained substantial international publishing ties, with a particular connection to the U.K., to which she journeyed annually, and she was a regular at the Bologna Book Fair," the SCBWI wrote. "Revered for her exquisite taste and editorial brilliance, Dinah was beloved not only by her authors, but also by colleagues across departments and at all stages of their careers, as she knew each of them and cared about them as individuals. A quiet but unmistakable force, Dinah was a towering figure in children's literature whose legacy continues in the careers--authorial and within publishing--that she launched, in the ongoing success of Clarion Books and its commitment to amplifying traditionally marginalized perspectives, and in the books that will live for generations."