Hilda van Stockum at 105 - A Long Publishing Life

It is the 105th birthday today of my mother, Hilda van Stockum. She would be 105 years old tomorrow, but she died in 2006 at 98. My siblings have written some appreciations of her life that I will post on the birthday calendar.

Meanwhile, I have been going the publishing agreements she left behind, and I made a table for them below. The first book contract that I find is for "A Day on Skates" with Harper & Brothers, in 1933. The last one was with Bethlehem Books in 1999 - a span of 66 years. That is an amazing career. 

A couple of stories about the table that follows. Hilda van Stockum married my father E. R. Marlin in 1932. It was the Depression so they needed money! My father was in New York City looking for work and he visited publishers on his wife's behalf. Viking's May Massee was out the day he called on them (she had just started with Viking, starting their juvenile division, after ten years at Doubleday), so it wasn't an oversight on her part that she didn't jump at the first book. Harper & Bros. had published a book of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, so Dad tried them and they bought the book. Millay wrote a nice preface.  The book succeeded in getting rave reviews in many publications, including the New Yorker, the NY Times and the Herald Tribune. May Massee wooed Hilda and took 13 of Hilda's books between 1937 and 1965.

Massee retired from Viking around 1960. Hilda's most popular book, "The Winged Watchman," was published next by Farrar Straus, which also published "The Borrowed House" - both about the Occupation of Holland in World War II.    

Memoranda of Agreements between Hilda van Stockum (or Estate) and Publishers

Year, Month	Book	Publisher, Editor
1933 November	A Day on Skates in Holland	Harper & Bros., Raymond
1937 October	The O’Sullivans (Cottage at Bantry)	Viking, Beal
1939 February	Francie on the Run	Viking, Massee
1939 November	Pegeen	Viking, Massee
1940 April	Kersti and St. Nicholas	Viking, Massee
1942 June	Andries	Viking, Massee
1943 July	Gerrit and the Organ	Viking, Massee
1945 Feb 1947 March	The Mitchells - Canadian Summer	Viking, Massee
1948 June	The Angels’ Alphabet	Viking, Massee
1949 December	Patsy and the Pup	Viking, Massee
1956 June	King Oberon’s Forest	Viking, Massee
1959 July	Friendly Gables	Viking, Massee
1961 May - 1974	Holland Story (Winged Watchman)	Farrar Straus& Cudahy, Cudahy
1961 July	Little Old Bear, Jeremy Bear	Constable, Grover
1962 May	Little Old Bear	Viking, Duff
1965 October	Mogo’s Flute	Viking, Duff
1973 February	Jacko Round and Round (Rufus)	Longman Young Books
1997 March	Reprint of Winged Watchman	Bethlehem, Sharpe
1997 March	Reprint of 3 Irish books	Bethlehem, Sharpe
1997 March	Reprint of 3 Mitchells Books	Bethlehem, Sharpe
1997 March	Reprint of A Day on Skates	Bethlehem, Sharpe
1997 March	Reprint of The Angel’s Alphabet	Bethlehem, Sharpe
1997 October	New Edition of Mugo’s [sic] Flute	Focus Publications
1998 March	Andries	Bethlehem, Sharpe
1999 August	Pamela Walks the Dog	Bethlehem, Sharpe
2009 January	Translation of A Day on Skates	Fukuinkan Shoten

I can't get over the fact that my mom's book "The Winged Watchman" has sold 50,000 copies in 15 years being marketed only to a relatively small group - U.S. and Canadian Christian home schoolers. It gets a 4.1 rating on the graded-on-a-curve Goodreads.com site, with 317 reviewers. It is ranked there in the top dozen books for children about World War II. (If you know the book, please add yourself to the rankers at http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/17000.Best_Children_s_Books_about_World_War_II_1939_1945!)

Daily Bio of Children's Book Authors-Illustrators

I have started a daily bio about children's book authors and illustrators - my way of paying tribute to the business that my mother Hilda van Stockum was in from 1934 when her first book was published by Harper  Brothers (A Day on Skates) to 2001 when the last book she illustrated (Pamela Walks the Dog) was published.

To access the daily bio, go to http://writers4kids.blogspot.com. If you have a children's book author you would like to have featured on his/her birthday, send me a bio. If it is copied from somewhere else, please provide the link.

The Winged Watchman Has Sold 50,000 Copies

The Winged Watchman by Hilda van Stockum has sold 50,000 copies in reprint (by Bethlehem Books) after long being in print by the original publisher, Farrar Straus, since 1962.

At least one reviewer on Amazon recommends it be made into a movie (this by a mother with three sons).

I'm exploring doing a comic book that could be the prototype for the movie.

Give a van Stockum Book - Order from Amazon

Give a book by Hilda van Stockum this year

Just click on the title to order from Amazon

For Kids - books by Hilda van Stockum -

Little Old Bear 

Patsy and the Pup 

Kersti and St. Nicholas 

King Oberon's Forest

For Teens - books by Hilda van Stockum 

Penengro  

King Oberon's Forest 

Memoirs - 

To Africa with a Dream, by Olga Marlin, daughter of HvS

A Meaning for Danny, by Brigid Marlin, daughter of HvS

ST. NICHOLAS | German?

Hilda van Stockum's  Kersti

December 6, 2012–I love to listen to Garrison Keillor's radio program, "The Prairie Home Companion", on NPR. He serves up a piece of it as a daily email, under the name "The Writer's Almanac".

It includes his reading of a poem and highlights of the lives of writers or other historical figures whose birthdays are celebrated that day. It is usually well researched and for me it is the Fifth (and funniest) Gospel.

But today it takes note of St. Nicholas Day by describing it as a holiday "celebrated in Germany and other European countries, as well as many American cities with German roots."

No, sir. I cannot let that pass. My late mother, Hilda van Stockum, would not want me to less this slide by. She was a huge fan of the saint and wrote a whole book about St. Nicholas, Kersti and St. Nicholas. I grew up revering this saintly Greek bishop who came from what is now part of Turkey.

The implication that St. Nicholas was primarily a German-venerated saint is untrue. St. Nicholas did not come to the United States from Germany, even though there are today more German-Americans than Dutch-Americans in the USA.

St. Nicholas came via Holland. When Englishman Henry Hudson sailed over in 1609 to what is now New York City on the "Half Moon" he was in the employ of the the Dutch East Indies Company.  He went back to Holland with news of the fertile river valley going north from the port that he called New Amsterdam. Within five years Dutch settlers had made a small city on the southern end of the island we call today Manhattan.

Thomas Nast Drew This Iconic Picture of
Sinterklaas Based on Moore's Poem.

The Dutch settlers brought with them their St. Nicholas, venerated by both the Protestants and Catholics in Holland. He was the patron saint of Amsterdam and sailors and children and became also the patron saint of New York City. Clement Clark Moore, an Englishman who owned a farm in what is now the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, is credited with the poem "'Twas the Night before Christmas" about a visit from St. Nicholas, "Sinterclaas" in Dutch, who was transformed from an angular bishop to a jolly elf driven by reindeer and a sleigh. Cartoonist Thomas Nast finished the picture of what we have come to know as Santa Claus.

The Dutch tradition includes two key elements:

• On St. Nicholas Eve (December 5), children sing songs about the arrival of the saint and partake of special St. Nicholas treats, including the Speculaas almond-ginger cookies. At St. Nicholas parties the saint arrives with his bishop's miter and crozier, and presents are distributed. 
• Whether or not there is a party on St. Nicholas Eve, children leave out a shoe in front of the fireplace and put carrots in them for St. Nick's white horse. On the morning of December 6, St. Nicholas is supposed to have arrived during the night on the rooftop with presents for good children. The carrots are gone and the good children get sweets and toys, whereas the bad children get just a lump of coal from the fireplace as the saint goes back up the chimney..

Most Germans emigrated to the United States much later than the Dutch. The German immigrants were mostly farmers and less likely to move than the Dutch, who were traders. The new Germans settled inland, in Ohio and Wisconsin and Minnesota. They have big populations in cities like Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Keillor's Lake Wobegon celebrates the Lutheran émigrés from Scandinavia and Germany. These farmers brought with them the Christmas tree (Tennenbaum), and the feast day that is celebrated is Christmas.

Children leave out a shoe in the German tradition, but the appearance of St. Nicholas is rare and the December 6 feast day is nothing like as important as in Holland, where traditionally has been more important than Christmas.

Happy St. Nicholas Day to van Stockum Fans - Dec. 6

St. Nicholas Day has great significance in Holland, Belgium and much of Germany - at least the equal of Christmas as a day of gift-giving. With New York still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, it is notable that St. Nicholas is the patron saint of millers and sailors, Holland and New York City. Hilda van Stockum's book Kersti and St. Nicholas (1934) which was just republished (2010) for $13.99 after being out of print for 50 years and available only through rare-book dealers at $200 for a good copy..

This is what the Dutch call a 

"Speculaas Moulin" - a windmill 

cookie, with almond and ginger 

spices. In Belgium they are called

"Speculoos" cookies. In both 

countries they are a specialty of St. 

Nicholas Eve (Dec. 5) and Day.

St. Nicholas is the patron saint of many countries, cities and groups, including millers, sailors, children, incarcerated people, Holland and New York City.

At left is a cookie my wife Alice purchased yesterday in Belgium. It is a St. Nicholas Day specialty. It has a windmill on it because Holland it's specialty of Holland and other low countries threatened by floods.

Hurricane Sandy recently shut down much of New York City and reminded us of the Dutch skill at keeping out water. Much of Holland is at or below sea level and the windmills were used to pump out the "polders", the areas surrounded by dikes (Dutch word for embankments).

The Port of Rotterdam is a great example of Dutch engineering to keep water at bay. It is also where my mother, Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006), was born. (Her father was a naval captain and she grew up near naval bases.) Her book, The Winged Watchman (1962), was republished in 1997 after 20 years being out of print. It has sold 45,000 copies in the reprint version and has been optioned for a movie and is in process of being the subject of a comic book. It is about  This book by my mother has special relevance in light of Hurricane Sandy, which caused most of its damage because of flooding and caused most of the lost economic activity because of the electricity outages.

First published in 1962, The Winged 

Watchman has sold 45,000 copies

in reprint since 1997 and was 

optioned  for a movie.

The story is about a family that lives in an old windmill during the Nazi Occupation. Two boys aged 10 and 14 join the Resistance. The book shows how the windmill did their work when the electric mills were starved for fuel during the Dutch famine.

New York City has lost the skills of its Dutch colonists and Hurricane Sandy did major target="_blank">damage to the areas of NYC near water. If the Dutch were still in charge this wouldn't have happened. NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo has assessed the damage statewide as $33 billion and has called for $30 billion in Federal aid. Speaker Christine Quinn has put the New York City damage (which would fit within the statewide number) at $26 billion and has called for $20 million and a surge-control system to prevent 15-foot waves from cascading through New York City streets.

Bring back the Dutch! They first came to New York when the Dutch East India Company in 1609 sent English navigator Henry Hudson to explore the river now named after him. He went far upriver into what is now Canada and wrote back to his sponsors that beavers lived on the river in abundance. A Dutch settlement, New Amsterdam, was founded in Manhattan largely to support trapping beavers and sending them to Europe for women to wear. The New York City coat of arms has two beavers on it as well as a four windmill wings in honor of the Dutch settlers.

Seal of the City of New York..

Note windmill wings and two

beavers.

The Dutch have been facing these flooding problems for many centuries. Their world preeminence in building windmills to pump out water also made them experts in making sails for the mill wings and this helped make them a global naval power for a time.

After the English took over the Dutch colony in 1664, they renamed it New York. The city grew most rapidly when the Hudson River became the gateway not only to upstate New York but also, after the Erie Canal was built, to the Great Lakes.

The Dutch have developed many kinds of technology to deal with today's challenges to their flood-threatened system of polders. New York needs to get their advice. And The Winged Watchman provides both a history of the importance of windmills in Dutch history and an education in the ways to deal with flooding.

HILDA VAN STOCKUM NEWS

Hilda  van Stockum, Self-Portrait

- A Dutch publisher located near the Hague has translated "The Borrowed House" into Dutch. That is only the second HvS book to be translated into Dutch, the other being "The Cottage at Bantry Bay", with the title changed to "The Little House [Huisje] on the Bay".  We are sending her the best photos we can find of HvS in her 20s or 30s.
- HvS's obituary in the newspaper "Het Parool" said that her books were famed around the world, everywhere it seems except the country of her birth. With two Dutch books out, that should change. The next two books that should be translated into Dutch are "The Winged Watchman" (which has sold 45,000 copies since it was given up for dead by Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and "A Day on Skates" (which should be given the name in the Dutch edition of "A Day on Skates in Friesland").
- HvS is appearing in a forthcoming book on converts to Catholicism. She would be so pleased to think of herself being in the tradition of Newman and Knox. Chesterton was the writer, she told me, that persuaded her to become a Catholic.
- An Australian comic book publisher is looking into making a comic out of a movie script based on "The Winged Watchman". The Japanese editions of "A Day on Skates" - the first HvS book translated into Japanese - sold well in 2009-2010. The Japanese Ambassador's wife wrote to us saying how much she loved the book. The publisher is happy and is looking at the possibility of doing more books by HvS.

- Portuguese editions of "The Cottage at Bantry Bay" and "The Mitchells" were published. 

-. A French edition of "The Winged Watchman" appeared  under the name "Le Veilleur" published by Hachette.

-. A German edition of "Penengro" was  published..