The Horn Book magazine celebrates a century of children’s art and literature, and lively debate
The Horn Book magazine is one of the most venerable Boston institutions you might never have heard of. Parents and caregivers may recognize it as something related to children’s books, specifically The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. Those who do know it are decidedly not a majority.
But the magazine, a colorful, Publisher’s Weekly-style publication founded in Boston and dedicated to reviews and articles about books for children and young adults, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, having weathered the upheavals of war, politics, and cultural and economic sea change for a full century without missing a publication date.
“It’s always been this sort of labor of love project,” said Elissa Gershowitz, The Horn Book’s current editor in chief, in a recent Zoom interview.
Founded by Bertha Mahony Miller in 1924, The Horn Book magazine was an offshoot of Miller’s Boylston Street-situated Bookshop for Boys and Girls. With drag queen story hour still 100 years off, the Bookshop’s events included art exhibits and a poetry series for children where T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Archibald MacLeish read their work — events in keeping with Miller’s desire to promote a love of both reading and good books among children as widely as possible. A traveling book caravan was part of that ambition, as was the magazine.
“If you couldn’t come to the bookstore, the idea was that the magazine would provide book lists and reviews and articles about the burgeoning children’s literature and librarianship fields,” said Gershowitz.
Miller, in the October 1924 inaugural edition of The Horn Book, was forthright about the magazine’s aims. “We are publishing this sheet to blow the horn for fine books for boys and girls” — a declaration that has become the publication’s stated mission, from which, according to Gershowitz, “we’ve never really wavered.”
That phrase — “fine books for boys and girls” — seems almost provocative in an age of censorship and political battles over what constitutes a worthy or even acceptable book for young people. But The Horn Book, with its century of accumulated literary history, is no stranger to controversy. Its archived articles, letters, and reviews, available to subscribers on its website, provide a glimpse of some of the more consequential events and paradigm shifts in US history through the lens of children’s literature.
In a 1943 July/August article entitled “Americans with the Wrong Ancestors,” San Diego librarian Clara Breed protested the internment of families and children of Japanese descent, inadvertently offering contemporary readers a vivid snapshot of first- and second-generation immigrants in her community at the time. An extended dust-up — between children’s book author and critic Eleanor Cameron and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” author Roald Dahl — ran in 1972 and 1973. More recently, in the early 2000s, the magazine featured discussions on the merit of race- and ethnicity-based awards such as the Coretta Scott King Award and the Pura Belpré Award for Latinx illustrators.
The Horn Book’s own book awards, presented annually in conjunction with The Boston Globe Foundation, are chosen by a threeperson committee.
“Most book award committees are much larger — nine, 10, 12 people,” said Gershowitz. “There’s a much more procedural feel. Our award is really just constant book talk and conversation and discussion and debate.” The “small subset” of books that win the awards, she notes, represent a snapshot in time — “what this committee saw and valued and agreed on.”
Media Source, which owns Junior Library Guild, Library Journal, and School Library Journal, purchased the publication in 2009, but The
Horn Book’s longstanding devotion to quality as well as its prestige in the industry has kept its editorial content relatively independent of marketplace pressures — no small feat for a magazine, published every other month, with a subscription base of around 6,000 and an average of 20,000 online users per month.
“We’ve always been sort of small,” Gershowitz noted. (In its century of existence, the magazine has only had eight editors.) In lieu of big budgets and a large staff, she says the magazine relies on the creativity and commitment of its editorial members to champion the work of children’s book artists and writers. (Horn Book staff consists of six positions, four of whom are full time, plus six rotating interns per year, in addition to a few others who work on a project basis.) Recent and upcoming efforts range from their current online March Madness contest, in which readers can vote on their favorite cover art from the magazine’s past issues starting in 2000; to collaborations with the Eric Carle Museum for Picture Book Art in Amherst; and special exhibits with the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton.
The fact that The Horn Book has deep roots in Boston’s cultural institutions also helps. Simmons University, where Miller received her secretarial degree, still maintains ties with The Horn Book via its Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. Gershowitz herself serves on the Boston Public Schools Library Services Advisory Board. The publication has a long association with the Boston and Cambridge public libraries as well as The Boston Globe, which has made the annual Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards possible since 1967.
Along with many thoughtful review blurbs and a Best Books of 2023 list, the most recent issue of the magazine includes the acceptance speeches of the 2023 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winners, a group that includes Thanhhà Lai, whose “When Clouds Touch Us” tells the story of a Vietnamese girl resettling in Texas; Northampton resident and artist Jarrett Krosoczska, who recounts a summer spent as a counselor at a camp for children with cancer in his graphic novel “Sunshine”; and Carole Boston Weatherford and Frank Morrison, writer and illustrator, respectively, for “Standing in the Need of Prayer,” a picture book retelling of an African American spiritual.
The range of authors, artists, and stories might be considered a bellwether of what The Horn Book magazine has in store for the next century.
“We’ve championed, questioned, revisited, and enjoyed books and reading for a hundred years and counting,” said Gershowitz. “We hope the next hundred years will be forward thinking, with a critical eye to the past, and a future that actively celebrates, embraces, and welcomes all young people.”