There followed the popular success of Four Saints in Three Acts, her opera with Virgil Thomson. I still remember sitting spellbound by the song “Pigeons on the Grass, Alas” and the beautiful voices of an all-black cast costumed entirely in folds of cellophane, against a backdrop of palm trees cut out of green paper. (My treasured recording of Four Saints is to this day played only for special visitors to our house.) After such a triumph, followed by her acclaimed lecture tour of America in 1934–35, Gertrude Stein had a certain leverage with publishers, and Random House issued four more books. None attained best-sellerdom, and sales were mostly poor. Quite probably these disappointments influenced Stein to accept John McCullough’s invitation to submit a book for children. Young Scott Books was a healthy and energetic publishing house but not exactly on a level with the big New York establishments such as Random House.

Excitement and trepidation reigned at Young Scott until the manuscript arrived from Paris. Bill Scott reminisced about the initial reactions to The World Is Round: “We all read it with bated breath, and it would be nice to recall that I had liked the thing. But it was hard—too hard for kids, I was sure. The others, Ethel Scott, John McCullough and, of course, Margaret Wise Brown, thought it was great in varying degrees, so it was decided to do the book.” A contract was soon on its way to France.

As it developed, Gertrude Stein had very definite ideas about the design and printing of the book, and explicit instructions began to arrive at Scott Books. The page color must be pink, and the type must be printed in blue, because Rose was the name of the child in the book and blue was her favorite color. “This turned out to be quite a printing problem,” said Bill Scott. “By now we were printing offset, which was a help in providing even coverage of big flat areas. The illustrator was using a certain amount of reverses in the pink. These needed to be very strong or they would be lost. I slowly gravitated toward a bold type that would not be overwhelmed by the color. I had another theory about the text type. I was afraid that if people read too much of Gertrude Stein at a time, they would go nuts. So I was looking for a face that was intrinsically hard to read. Finally I had it! Linotype ‘Memphis,’ which I never liked much but which filled the requirement of boldness. The printer, LeHuray, nearly went broke paying for the huge amount of pink ink, but he got the job done without too much variation between the two sides of the sheet. I recall setting up the title page myself, but I think I got someone else to paste up the circular type of the dedication.” The heavy blue type on the brilliant pink page turned out to be striking.

The opportunity to illustrate a book by Gertrude Stein was a prize sought by many artists. Scott cleverly sidestepped choosing among them by holding a competition. But again Stein presented her publisher with a problem. She wrote that she had already selected the illustrator—her English protégé, Sir Francis Rose.

Probably Mr. Rose’s most important qualification was that he bore the right name; in Gertrude Stein’s theory of names what could be more fitting than an illustrator named Rose for The World Is Round. Francis Rose was a longtime friend, to be sure, but not everyone in Stein’s circle was admiring of his work. When Stein bought her first painting by Rose, Picasso asked how much she paid for it. She told him that she had paid three hundred francs. Picasso said brusquely, “For that price one can buy something quite good.” But she went on to acquire painting after painting by Rose. The name was right.

William Scott did not acquiesce so easily to the demand that Rose illustrate The World Is Round, and managed to convince Gertrude Stein that Young Scott Books had a talented number of illustrators from which she could choose. He dispatched to Paris the pictures from the contest he felt best suited the text.

Clement Hurd, an eager competitor, gave an account of the arrival of the package in Paris containing the artists’ works.