Obituary Note: Frances Foster

She;f Awareness

Children's book editor Frances Foster died on Sunday after a long illness. She was 83.
In September 2012, when she was honored at the Eric Carle Awards in the "Mentor" category, Foster said that as she was coming up through the ranks, "who you were was how you mentored." She told an anecdotal gem about being sent as a young assistant to Roald Dahl, to tell him to "tone down his racist characterization of the Oompa-Loompas" (a story we first heard in Leonard S. Marcus's interview with her for the Horn Book). She didn't quite understand why she was chosen until she learned that "no one in the department was speaking to Roald Dahl at the time. I was a safe sacrifice." Foster edited Dahl for many years, she said, "until I, too, had the inevitable falling out."

Foster began her career in the 1950s as assistant to Alice Dalgliesh at Charles Scribner's Sons, where she stayed until 1961, then worked with William R. Scott and Margaret K. McElderry (until McElderry's famous dismissal by William Jovanovich at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) before joining Knopf (where she worked with Dahl). She founded her imprint at Farrar, Straus & Giroux (now part of Macmillan) in 1996 and retired last year. 

Among the many talents she mentored during her career were Leo Lionni, Barbara McClintock, Philip Pullman, Louis Sachar and Peter Sís. Her books have garnered the Newbery Medal, Caldecott Honors and the National Book Award. Jon Yaged of Macmillan reports that there will be a memorial service for her in late summer or early fall.