You and I should be taking turns, chapter by chapter, laughing and seizing the book from each other. For of course it is fun to find out how well one reads it. Inevitably one wants to see how much better one does the next bit, in spite of the lack of punctuation; how, in fact one produces punctuation oneself with so little trouble. . . . The story is subtle; to some it will seem no story at all, to others a thoughtful and entirely new exploration of the moods of childhood. Here is the child’s quick apperception, his vivid sensation, his playing with words and ideas, then tossing them away forever. . . . For me, the whole is an unforgettable creative experience. It may be too esoteric to have a fair chance with the average child. But it is so new in its pattern, so interesting in its word rhythms, so ‘different’ in its humor, that the person of any age who reads it gives several necessary jolts to his literary taste. Only a true artist could have written so charming a book as The World Is Round.”
The genius of Gertrude Stein produced a work of literature for children that can be called classic for its invention. She added spin to our globe.
—Edith Thacher Hurd
1985
GERTRUDE STEIN (1874–1946) was born in Pittsburgh of a prosperous German-Jewish family. She was educated in France and the United States, worked under the pioneering psychologist William James, and later studied medicine. With her brother Leo she was an important patron of the arts, acquiring pictures by many contemporary artists, most famously Picasso, while her home became a popular meeting place for writers and painters from Matisse to Hemingway. Her books include Three Lives, Tender Buttons, and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
CLEMENT HURD (1908–1988) is best known for illustrating Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, the classic picture books by Margaret Wise Brown. He studied painting in Paris with Fernand Léger and others in the early 1930s. After his return to the United States in 1935, he began to work in children’s books. He illustrated more than one hundred books, many of them with his wife, Edith Thacher Hurd, including the Johnny Lion books, The Day the Sun Danced, and The Merry Chase. A native of New York City, he lived most of his life in Vermont and California.
EDITH THACHER HURD (1910–1997) wrote more than eighty books in her long career. After attending Radcliffe College, she became a teacher at the Bank Street School in New York City. In the 1930s she began to write children’s books, several of them with Margaret Wise Brown, which included Five Little Firemen and Two Little Miners. She also created many beloved books with her husband, Clement Hurd. Her essay “The World Is Not Flat,” included in this edition of The World Is Round, was among her last writings.
THACHER HURD (1949–) feels fortunate to have grown up in a family of artists and writers. He graduated from the California College of the Arts with a degree in painting and has written and illustrated children’s books ever since. Among his books are Art Dog, Bad Frogs, and Bongo Fishing. His book Mama Don’t Allow won the Boston Globe/Horn Book award, and Mama Don’t Allow and Mystery on the Docks were both Reading Rainbow featured books. He and his wife, Olivia, divide their time between Vermont and Berkeley, California.
Cover design by Agnieszka Stachowicz
Cover illustrations by Clement Hurd
THE WORLD IS ROUND
2013 edition © HarperCollinsPublishers
Book Text Copyright © 1939, renewed 1966 by Gertrude Stein
Illustration Copyright © 1939, renewed 1966 by Clement Hurd
Foreword Copyright © 2013 by John Thacher Hurd
Afterword Copyright © 1986 by The Arion Press
Letter (March 25, 1940) to Gertrude Stein from John
McCullough © 2013 The Estate of John McCullough
The essay “The World Is Not Flat” is from The World Is Round by Gertrude Stein, with pictures by Clement Hurd, and with a companion volume, The World Is Not Flat, by Edith Thacher Hurd, published by the Arion Press, San Francisco, in a limited edition in 1986.
The letters between Clement Hurd and Gertrude Stein and the letter from John McCullough to Gertrude Stein were transcribed from the original correspondence in the Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. All correspondence is used with the permission by the Estate of Gertrude Stein, the Estate of Clement Hurd, and the Estate of John McCullough.
THE WORD IS ROUND. Copyright © 2013 by Gertrude Stein and Clement Hurd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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ISBN 978-0-06-220307-6
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