The Ghost in Room 11 (9 page)

In
Holiday House: The First Sixty-Five Years
(2000), Russell Freedman and Barbara Elleman describe the early days of the publishing house, which was founded in New York City:

In 1935, a new firm called Holiday House set up three desks in the corner of a printing plant and prepared to publish its first list of books. “The event was unique in at least one respect,”
Publishers Weekly
would say. “The new company was the first American publishing house ever founded with the purpose of publishing nothing but children's books.”

The first of its kind, then—a specialized publisher with a unique program and a diminutive catalog, small enough to fit in a child's palm. The catalog announced five books, three nursery rhyme broadsides, and the publisher's intentions: “… Its editorial policy embraces only such books as are worthy of inclusion in a child's permanent library.”

And so began our history. Holiday House “has changed over the years, sometimes by design and sometimes not. And it will continue to evolve and adapt. Yet in many ways it remains the same old place: relatively small, very independent, and completely devoted to its authors and illustrators.”

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