We said goodbye yesterday to a friend of mine and of the Horn Book, Susan P. Bloom. I met Susan thirty years ago, when she and Cathie Mercier invited me to teach Simmons's Summer Children's Literature Institute. That year's theme, "Masquerade" was aptly borne out when Susan and Cathie Mercier picked me up at the airport wearing enormous papier-mache Wild Things heads. I can still see them proceeding carefully down to the gate (in an era when one could) to meet me. Susan could combine majesty and whimsy in a way like no one else.



Those qualities, plus an abundance of warmth and hospitality, served Susan well in her directorship of the Center for the Study of Children's Literature, a job that required scholarship, organizational talent, and a great deal of diplomacy. I see her in the grand tradition of what I call the Great Ladies and what Susan's Simmons colleague Maggie Bush more soberly characterized as the New England Book Women, teachers and librarians and critics who could be both high-minded and pragmatic, their work infused with a belief in the intrinsic value and power of children's literature. Susan's enthusiasm for books (and theater, and food, and flowers, and parties...) was contagious: if she was enjoying something with such gusto, you'd think there must be something to it. And, most definitely, to her. A great lady, a great teacher, a great friend.