Under the Green Willow

A MOVING STORY, BY ROBIN ROY

Granny would like to tell you a little about the olden days. The days of the Reconstruction Period.

From left to right: Ada Shearon, Libby Shub, Ava Weiss, and Susan Hirschman

Many years ago when I was a young pup at Greenwillow Books, the office was located at 105 Madison Avenue. Between 29^th and 30^th Streets. This was way back in the 1980s—when the entire 18^th floor of what was then William Morrow shared one computer and one dot-matrix printer! (You’re probably too young to remember printers with pins that held on to little holes in the sides of the paper.)

One day, the nicest gent in all of publishing, Mr. Al Marchioni, proclaimed that the Morrow children’s book division would move up in the world: to the 20^th floor! Egads! There isn’t much that’s more frightening to most editorial people than change—and this was two whole floors! We Greenwillowites dutifully packed up our books and files and made the arduous journey.

Libby Shub.

And the “new digs!” as Altie Karper, Greenwillow comma legend, proclaimed them, were swell . . . once we unpacked and reorganized and had a few months to get used to the change. My new office was right across from our most loved Libby Shub, and the sun shined much brighter there—even though I’d lost my office window. (How lucky we were to have known Libby and immediately loved her, and how I still miss her.)

Uh-oh. We were headed for new digs again! Hadn’t we just moved up in the world? We had to move uptown in the world: to 1350 Avenue of the Americas. How posh! Right in the heart of midtown, near fancy publishers like S&S and Harper! Lunch was going to be more expensive, but we could handle change. We had survived one move; why not another?

We packed again. Cleaned out more files. Threw out more papers. Change is good! Every move organizes you more! Good grief. New space was being laid out for William Morrow. Spiffy new digs!  We heard only good things about the space to come.

Exhausted from packing (in the middle of our daily operations and editing books, of course), we nonetheless arrived excited. New digs! Change is good! Wait. The walls are all in the wrong places! Why is Susan Hirschman’s office smaller than the storage closet? Why is there an entrance to the women’s room behind the assistant’s chair? Aren’t we short one desk space?

Uh-oh. Don’t unpack anything! Take all your essentials—cookies, coffee, red pencils, yellow stickies—and head to the conference room! Ooh, a conference room all for Greenwillow (can’t last). What a nice room—for the entire staff to share for more than two weeks, while a crack construction team rebuilds the offices around us. Wait! We’re publishing folk; we read for a living. We need peace and qu— Was that a jackhammer?

Know what? Those two weeks back in the olden days were two of our most productive work weeks ever! I wore sweatpants to work every day! Why dress up when everything is full of Sheetrock dust? The lot of us sat around a large table together. What a team!

“Phyllis Larkin, O Vocative-O queen, O Verbs of Utterance princess, what do you think of this line break?” Phyllis was right across the table from me!

Ava Weiss.

“Ava Weiss, O teacher of the Manuscript Castoff, here is that jacket design returned to you from proofreading,” I say to the sparkling lady on my left!

“Gorgeous jacket!” Susan Hirschman, our classy leader, tells Ava from my other side.

“Greenwillow Books, this is Kathleen Flanigan. Yes, Susan is right here. Just a sec.” And Susan was literally right there.

How convenient! How surprising. Moving doesn’t have to be as stressful as everyone always says. Reconstruction doesn’t have to be dreadful. We were a team of incredible book machines. We probably produced more in two weeks of sweatpants wearing (okay, I don’t remember Susan Hirschman wearing sweatpants) than in any other two weeks then or since. Despite our conditions. Long live Greenwillow!

Oh, and we did finally move out of the conference room and into redesigned offices, and we grumbled all over again about unpacking. (I’m not sure Phyllis ever completely unpacked, even after retirement. Phyllis? Do you have a box in your apartment we should go through?)

What’s this? Greenwillow moved again? You young whippersnappers probably handled it better than we did.

Best of luck in your new digs on 53^rd Street!

Love, Granny Robin, former Greenwillow editor

Robin Roy was an editor at Greenwillow Books in the 1980s and ’90s. She is an actress who has played Catherine in Proof, among many other roles. She also coordinates events for BookPALS, a reading and literacy initiative of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation.