Remembering Dick Jackson

I was ter­ri­bly sad­dened to learn of the death of Dick Jack­son, a good friend and one of the great editors.

Over many years I worked with him on some twen­ty books, but I had to go back and look at my list, because there may have been more. I worked with him more than any oth­er editor.

I con­fess, though I knew him for so many years, I won’t pre­tend to say I knew him well. He was an intense­ly pri­vate man. He had let it be known that he wished no funer­al or memo­r­i­al service—utterly typ­i­cal of the man I knew—and did not know. If there had been such ser­vices, there would have been hun­dreds show­ing up.  Any list of the authors and illus­tra­tors with whom he worked would include a huge num­ber of major artists who wrote many key books, books that changed the nature of children’s books. No editor’s books won more major awards than his. In the world of children’s lit­er­a­ture Richard Jack­son was a major fig­ure. As edi­tors go, he was the major figure.

Among his many skills was his abil­i­ty to work with very dif­fer­ent writ­ers. I rather sus­pect­ed the way he worked with me was not at all the way he worked—or was—with Paula Fox or Judy Blume, Bri­an Flo­ca, or many oth­ers.  In fact, dur­ing the few times I was with him when he was with a group of his writ­ers and illus­tra­tors, he looked pos­i­tive­ly uncom­fort­able, as if he much pre­ferred to be with us indi­vid­u­al­ly. Chameleon-like, if you will, but cre­ative­ly so.

When work­ing on a book, I could call upon him, and though I knew he was work­ing on many oth­er projects, (nev­er named) he would be instant­ly and whol­ly by with me, and the par­tic­u­lar work.  We had a joke that we were matched very well inso­far as he was dyslex­ic, and I was dys­graph­ic. He encour­aged being bold, dif­fer­ent, and radical.

When we worked on a book, and it was essen­tial­ly done, he did not drop the book. Almost inevitably, per­haps two or three weeks lat­er, I’d get a call. “I’ve been think­ing,” was his pref­ace, and he went on to point out some­thing we had neglect­ed to do, a gap, a small but vital point missed, a sto­ry beat dropped. He would be right, of course.  Dick Jack­son was rarely wrong. And he was right there for the pro­duc­tion process. More­over, he keen­ly and active­ly sup­port­ed his books when they were published. 

He was enor­mous fun to work with. So many of our edi­to­r­i­al talks were punc­tu­at­ed with laugh­ter, and rich cre­ativ­i­ty. To talk out a prob­lem, a dif­fi­cul­ty, was to find cre­ative ways to solve the prob­lem. I loved work­ing with him. And while I know he would be embar­rassed to have it expressed, I loved the man. And I have absolute­ly no doubt that in that emo­tion, I stand in a large crowd.