Letter from the editor
You said Emmet loved pigs, gave thanks for pigs at Thanksgiving Day dinner, longed to have a pig. The zoning laws made that impossible in St. Louis. So his parents arranged to have him own a pig which lived in Tennessee. He has pictures of his pig. He receives letters from the farmer about his pig. He puts aside part of his allowance to provide mash for the pig. And he is saving money and making plans to go to Tennessee on his vacation and see his pig. This could make, perfectly done, a delightful story and you could end it with the arrival in Tennessee and the lovely meeting of Emmet and his pig. Or with his trip back to St. Louis, dreadfully sorry to leave his pig but deeply happy and relatively secure in the knowledge that at some future time we will be able to come to visit his pig again. Of course it sounds like nothing written down flatly like that. But a good writer could write it up real good, I always think….. Have just reread my letter. Who deal this mess? On second thought, I think the ending should be after the visit to Tennessee, for children would want to know what Emmet and the pig did, how the vacation was, what happened on the farm, etc., and it would give you a chance to do the city-type-life (St. Louis) and country life (Tennessee farm). I think it could be about four or five thousand words. Now you shouldn’t spend too much time on it, so if any of this seems like too much trouble just tell me and I’ll not mention it any more to you. But it would be darling, if you were interested.
— An excerpt from a letter written by Ursula Nordstrom to Mary Stolz. February 13, 1957.
Published in the book, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, 1998.
The book mentioned is called Emmet’s Pig, 1959.
