Jane (Hyatt) Yolen (1939-)

A prolific and highly esteemed author, Jane Yolen is the creator of hundreds of books for children, teens, and adults. Spanning genres from fiction and poetry to biography, criticism, and books on the art of writing, she is particularly well known for her history-based fiction, as well as fantasy novels such as those in her "Pit Dragon" series, which take place in a mythological world based around cockfighting dragons on an arid planet. A folksinger and storyteller, Yolen has created works that reflect her love of music and oral folklore, including compilations of international songs, rhymes, and stories. Several of the author's books are autobiographical or incorporate elements from her life or the lives of her family. Now grown, Yolen's three children all contribute to her works, daughter Heidi E. Y. Stemple as a writer and sons Adam and Jason Stemple as a musical arranger and photographer, respectively. She also writes both short stories and novels with her musician son.

Yolen is perhaps best known for creating original folk and fairy tales and fables that often contain a surprising twist and a strong moral core. She has received special In Yolen's 1992 mix of fantasy and history, a Jewish grandmother's startling last words spark a teen to embark on a journey to explore her family's Holocaust legacy. (Cover illustration by Tristan Elwell.) recognition for her literary fairy tales, which combine familiar fantasy motifs with contemporary elements and philosophical themes. As a fantasist, she includes dragons, unicorns, witches, and mermaids as characters, and her stories often feature shape-shifters: animals who have the ability to transform into humans or humans into animals. As a writer, Yolen invests her works with images, symbols, and allusions as well as with wordplay—especially puns—and metaphors. She is considered an exceptional prose stylist whose fluid, musical writing is both polished and easy to read aloud. In Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, Marcia G. Fuchs commented: "Faerie, fiction, fact, or horrible fantasy, Yolen's lyrical and magical tales are indeed tales to read and to listen to, to share, to remember, and to pass on."

Born in New York City in 1939, Yolen bloomed as a writer early on. A voracious reader as well as a tomboy, she played games in Central Park while being encouraged in her reading and writing by her teachers. "I was," she recalled in Something about the Author Autobiography Series, "the gold star star. And I was also pretty impossibly full of myself. In first or second grade, I wrote the school musical, lyrics and music, in which everyone was some kind of vegetable. I played the lead carrot. Our finale was a salad. Another gold star."

Among her favorite books as a child were the folk stories collected by British folklorist in his colored fairy books, "as well as Treasure Island and the Louisa May Alcott books," as she once told Something about the Author (SATA). "All of the Alcott books, Jo's Boys, and even the Alcott books that nobody else had heard of, became part of my adolescent reading. I read The Wind in the Willows and the Mowgli stories. We didn't have 'young adult' fiction, so I skipped right into adult books which tended to be very morose Russian novels—my Dostoevsky phase—then I got hooked on Joseph Conrad. Adventure novels or lugubrious emotional books are what I preferred. Then I went back into my fairy tale and fantasy stage. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, metaphysical and folkloric fantasy."

In sixth grade, Yolen was accepted by Hunter, a girls' school for what were called "intelligently gifted" students. The author said: "With my gold stars and my writing ability, I expected to be a superior gift to Hunter. To my surprise—and horror—I was barely in the middle of my class and managed to stay there by studying extremely hard." While at Hunter, music—especially folk songs, an interest she shared with her father—became her new interest. In addition to starring as Hansel in the school production of Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel, she played the piano, and wrote songs; she also became the lead dancer in her class at Balanchine's American School of Ballet.

In addition to her other achievements, Yolen also developed her interest in writing during her early teens, and in eighth grade she penned her first two books, a nonfiction book on pirates and a novel about a trip across the West by covered wagon. She described this work, which is seventeen pages long and includes a plague of locusts, death by snake bite, and the birth of a baby on the trail, as "a masterpiece of economy"; in fact, short stories and poetry continue to be her favored genres.

At age thirteen Yolen moved with her family to Westport, Connecticut, where she became captain of her high school girls' basketball team; news editor of the school paper; head of the Jewish Youth Group; vice president of the Spanish, Latin, and jazz clubs; a member of the school's top singing group; and a contributor to the school literary magazine. She also won a Scholastic Writing award, an essay contest called "I Speak for Democracy," and her school's English prize. Before graduation, her class named Yolen's voice to be part of "The Perfect Senior." She also became close to her cousin-in-law, Honey Knopp, who sparked Yolen's lifelong interest in the Quaker faith.

After graduating from high school, Yolen attended Smith College, where she majored in English and Russian literature and minored in religion. In addition to continuing her involvement in campus activities, she also continued her writing, and saw poems published in Poetry Digest as well as small literary magazines while a college student. Although poetry was in her soul, Yolen decided to become a journalist, and during the summer before her sophomore year she worked as a cub reporter for a Connecticut newspaper. Although she continued to intern for newspapers during the next few years, Yolen dismissed the idea of being a journalist when she found herself making up facts and writing stories off the top of her head; she also found that she was emotional when it came to interviewing the poor. "It became clear," she told SATA, "that I was a fiction writer."

After graduating from Smith, Yolen moved to New York City and worked briefly for This Week magazine and the Saturday Review before launching her career as a freelance writer by helping her father write his book The Young Sportsman's Guide to Kite Flying. While living in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1960, she met her future husband, David Stemple, who was a friend of one of her roommates; the couple were married in 1962.

Several years working for New York publishers followed, and then Yolen's father introduced her to the vice president of David McKay Publishing Company. Yolen's first book for children, the nonfiction title Pirates in Petticoats was accepted by Dobbs and published by McKay in 1963; Dobbs also bought Yolen's second work, See This Little Line?, a picture book in rhyme that was published the same year. While continuing to work in publishing, she became a ghostwriter for Rutledge Press, authoring concept and activity books published under different names. In 1963 she became an assistant editor in the children's department at Knopf, where she met authors and illustrators such as Roald Dahl and Roger Duvoisin and learned about juvenile literature.

In 1965 Yolen and her husband spent nine months traveling in Europe, Israel, and Greece. Her daughter, Heidi Stemple was born in 1966, shortly after her parents returned to America. When David Stemple took a job at the University of Massachusetts Computer Center in Amherst, he and Yolen moved to western Massachusetts, where son Adam Stemple was born in 1968 and Jason Stemple in 1970. While raising her children, Yolen began her writing career in earnest.

The picture book The Emperor and the Kite is the first of Yolen's books to receive a major award. The story outlines how Djeow Seow, the youngest and smallest daughter of an ancient Chinese emperor, saves her father after he is kidnapped by sending him a kite to which is attached a rope made of grass, vines, and strands of her hair. As a reviewer in Children's Book News commented, "Here is a writer who delights in words and can use them in a controlled way to beautiful effect." In 1968, The Emperor and the Kite earned Yolen her first Lewis Carroll Shelf Award; the second would come for The Girl Who Loved the Wind, in 1972.

Another early award winner was 1974's The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales, which won the Golden Kite Award and was nominated for the National Book Award in 1975. It is a collection of five stories that, according to a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, "could be called modern folk- or fairy tales, since they boast all the usual ingredients—supernatural beings, inexplicable happenings, the struggle between good and evil forces." The critic concluded that Yolen's "artistry with words . . . makes a striking book," while a critic in Kirkus Reviews called The Girl Who Cried Flowers a "showpiece, for those who can forego the tough wisdom of traditional fairy tales for a masterful imitation of the manner."

All in the Woodland Early, one of several song books authored by Yolen, teaches the alphabet through rhyming verses. The book outlines a little boy's hunting expedition in the woods; each letter represents the animal, bird, or insect—both familiar and unfamiliar—for which he is searching. At the end of the last verse, readers discover that the boy is gathering the animals to play with him and a little girl. Yolen also provides music to go with her words. Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Jerome Beatty, Jr., said: "Count on versatile Jane Yolen to invent something special and intriguing," while a reviewer for Publishers Weekly called All in the Woodland Early "an outstanding alphabet book." Other song books by Yolen include Apple for the Teacher and Jane Yolen's Songs of Summer, both of which include music by Adam Stemple.

Other highly praised picture books by Yolen include Harvest Home, a story about a farm family's wheat harvest that School Library Journal contributor Catherine Threadgill praised as a "reflective and respectful tribute to a bygone era"; Welcome to the River of Grass, which introduces young children to the Florida Everglades ecosystem; and My Brothers' Flying Machine: Wilbur, Orville, and Me, a story about the fathers of flight as told by their younger sister, Katherine. Her fascination with folk stories extends to Russia in several books, including The Flying Witch, a Baba Yaga story about an old woman who uses young children as a main ingredient in her evening meal, and The Firebird, a unique retelling of a classic Eastern European fable. More fanciful works include Hoptoad, about a foolish toad determined to cross a highway despite the warnings of his cold-blooded buddies, and How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?, one in a series of books that finds large, bulky dinosaurs dealing with common, child-sized problems while attempting to fit into a tiny, child-sized world. Other volumes in the series include How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? and How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Room?

Throughout her career Yolen has predominately alternated between books for the very young, poetry collections, and historical fiction and fantasy for older readers. Her historical novels often focus on an unusual subject, as in her novel The Gift of Sarah Barker. Set in a Shaker community, the story features teens Abel and Sarah, who have grown up in the Society of Believers, a celibate religious community, and now find that they are sexually attracted to each other. As the young people struggle with their feelings, Yolen depicts the contradiction between the religious ecstasy of the Shakers—whose dances and celebrations gave the group their nickname—and the repressive quality of their lifestyle. Sarah and Abel decide to leave the community, but not before Sister Agatha, Sarah's abusive mother, commits suicide. Writing in Children's Book Review Service, Barbara Baker called The Gift of Sarah Barker "an absorbing tale" and a "jewel of a historical novel," while Stephanie Zvirin noted in Booklist that, "Into the fabric of a teenage romance [Yolen] weaves complicated and disturbing—at times violent—undercurrents that add a dimension both powerful and provocative." Before writing Sarah Barker, Yolen interviewed some of the few remaining Shakers for background information. She also used her daughter, Heidi, who was then becoming interested in boys, as the prototype for Sarah. As the author once explained to SATA, "I kept wondering how, in a Shaker community, you could keep the boys away from a girl like Heidi or keep Heidi away from the boys. I imagined a Romeo and Juliet story within the Shaker setting."

Working in collaboration with Scots writer Robert J. Harris, Yolen has penned a number of novels based in Scottish history, one of Yolen's abiding interests—she makes her home in that part of Great Britain for part of each year. Queen's Own Fool recounts the tragic reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, from the viewpoint of her fool, Nicola. A French-born orphan, Nicola follows Mary from France to Scotland as Mary tries to gain her place as queen of Scotland while political power is fought over by a variety of Scottish nobles. Praising the novel in Kliatt, Claire Rosser wrote that Yolen is "someone who knows how to appeal to young people and keep a story moving swiftly."

In a similar fashion, the story of Bonny Prince Charlie is told from the point of view of a young recruit in Prince across the Water. Thirteen-year-old Highlander Duncan joins the rebels hoping to place the Scottish Prince Charles on the throne of England in the mid-1700s, and he loyally follows the call of his clan and his king until the massacre of Charlie's followers by British forces at the Battle of Culloden Field dashes Scots' hopes. Booklist reviewer Carolyn Phelan praised Prince across the Water for its "convincing depictions of people and relationships," while in Horn Book Anita L. Burkham dubbed it a "well-told story set in an intriguing era that will leave readers mulling over thoughts of war and peace."

Several of Yolen's more recent historical works have been in the area of nonfiction, as in the "Mystery from History" series, written with the author's daughter. In The Wolf Girls: An Unsolved Mystery from History, as in other volumes in the series, a fictional story is built around an actual incident that left many questions unanswered. The novel focuses on two orphaned girls living in India who, in the 1920s, were reportedly raised by wolves by missionary Joseph Singh, who ultimately gave the children a home. Noting the authors' inclusion of expert scientific evidence and a number of possible explanations for the girls' feral condition, School Library Journal reviewer Anne Chapman dubbed the book "tasty fodder for emerging detectives."

Other books in the series include Mary Celeste, about a ghost ship, Roanoke: The Lost Colony, and The Salem Witch Trials, the last about the hysteria that gripped the Massachusetts Bay colony during its early days. Although many books have been published that detail the frenzy caused by two girls over a supposed witch in their community, Yolen and Stemple's version "gives a different perspective" and by presenting the facts in an organized and impartial manner, lets young sleuths "evaluate the evidence and draw their own conclusions," according to School Library Journal contributor Elaine Fort Weischedel.

Dragon's Blood is the first volume in Yolen's "Pit Dragon" series. High fantasy for young adults that incorporates elements of science fiction, the series presents a completely realized imaginary world. Dragon's Blood introduces Jakkin, a fifteen-year-old slave boy whose master is the best dragon breeder on the planet Austar IV, a former penal colony where inhabitants train and fight dragons domesticated by the early colonists. Jakkin steals a female dragon hatchling to train in secret for the gaming pits, a cockfighting ritual that contributes largely to the planet's economy. Hoping to win his freedom by raising a superior fighting dragon, Jakkin establishes an amazing mental link with his "snatchling," which he names Heart's Blood. The story ends with the dragon's first win; Jakkin—now free—learns that his master knew about his theft and that Akki, a bond girl training in medicine whom Jakkin loves, is his master's illegitimate daughter. Writing in Horn Book, Ann A. Flowers called Dragon's Blood an "original and engrossing fantasy," while Patricia Manning wrote in School Library Journal that the novel provides a "fascinating glimpse of a brand new world."

In the second volume of the series, Heart's Blood, Jakkin is the new Dragon Master and Heart's Blood has given birth to five hatchlings. Jakkin becomes involved in Austar politics when he is asked to infiltrate rebel forces and rescue Akki. Becoming the pawns in a deadly game, Jakkin and Akki flee with Heart's Blood into the freezing cold of night, called Dark After. Cornered by the authorities after inadvertently blowing up a major city, the trio fight for their lives. In the battle, Heart's Blood is killed. In order to survive the freezing temperatures, Jakkin and Akki enter her carcass; when they One of several historical novels by Yolen and coauthor Robert J. Harris, this book finds a young Odysseus joining friends Helen and Penelope on a dangerous journey that takes him into the heart of the Labyrinth. (Illustration by Hala Wittwer.) emerge, they have been given the gift of dragon's sight—telepathy—and the ability to withstand the cold.

A Sending of Dragons finds Jakkin and Akki avoiding capture by fleeing into the wilderness with Heart's Blood's five babies. When they enter a hidden tunnel, the group encounter an underground tribe of primitives who have discovered a way to extract metals on Austar IV. Jakkin and Akki also learn that these people, who, like them, are bonded to dragons, have developed a bloody, terrifying ritual of dragon sacrifice. At the end of the novel, Akki, Jakkin, and the fledglings escape with two of the primitive community's dragons. Confronted by their pursuers from above ground, they decide to return to the city and use their new knowledge to bring about an end to the feudalism and enslavement on Austar IV.

A reviewer in Publishers Weekly stated that "Yolen's tightly plotted, adventurous trilogy constitutes superb storytelling. She incorporates elements of freedom and rebellion, power and control, love and friendship in a masterfully crafted context of a society sick with perversion." Writing in School Library Journal, Michael Cart noted that, like the two volumes preceding it, the particular strengths of A Sending of Dragons include "the almost encyclopedic detail which Yolen has lavished upon her fully realized alternative world of Austar IV, in her sympathetic portrayal of the dragons as both victims and telepathic partners, and in the symbolic sub-text which enriches her narrative and reinforces her universal theme of the inter-dependency and unique value of all life forms." A fourth volume in the series was in the works for 2006.

One of Yolen's most highly acclaimed books combines history and fantasy. The Devil's Arithmetic, a young adult novel, is a time-travel fantasy that is rooted in one of the darkest episodes of history, the novel features Hannah Stern, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl who is transported from contemporary New York to rural Poland in 1942 when she opens the door for Elijah during her family's Seder celebration. Captured by the Nazis, Hannah—now called Chaya—is taken to a death camp, where she meets Rivka, a spirited young girl who teaches her to fight against the dehumanization of the camp and tells her that some must live to bear witness. When Rivka is chosen to be taken to the gas chamber, Chaya, in an act of self-sacrifice, goes in her place; as the doors of the gas chamber close, Chaya—now Hannah again—is returned to the door of her grandparents's apartment, waiting for Elijah. Hannah realizes that her Aunt Eva is her friend Rivka and that she also knew her grandfather in the camp.

A critic in Kirkus Reviews wrote of The Devil's Arithmetic: "Yolen is the author of a hundred books, many of which have been praised for their originality, humor, or poetic vision, but this thoughtful, compelling novel is unique among them." Writing in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Roger Sutton noted that Yolen's depiction of the horrors in the camp "is more graphic than any we've seen in holocaust fiction for children before." Confirming that Yolen has brought the "time travel convention to a new and ambitious level," Cynthia Samuels of the New York Times Book Review concluded that "sooner or later, all our children must know what happened in the days of the Holocaust. The Devil's Arithmetic offers an affecting way to begin."

Yolen, who has said that she wrote The Devil's Arithmetic for her own children, stated in her acceptance speech for the Sydney Taylor Book Award: "There are books one writes because they are a delight. There are books one writes because one is asked to. There are books one writes because . . . they are there. And there are books one writes simply because the book has to be written."

With Encounter, a picture book published to coincide with the five-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, Yolen created what is perhaps her most controversial work. Written as the remembrance of an elderly Taino man, the story, which describes the first encounter of Native Americans with Columbus, depicts the man's experience as a small boy. The narrator awakens from a terrifying dream about three predatory birds riding the waves to see three anchored ships. Frightened yet fascinated by the strangers who come ashore, the boy tells his chief not to welcome the men, but he is ignored. The boy and several other Indians are taken aboard the ships as slaves. After he escapes by jumping overboard, the boy tries to warn other tribes, but to no avail; the Taino are wiped out.

Calling Encounter an "unusual picture book," Carolyn Phelan noted in Booklist that "while the portrayal of Columbus as evil may strike traditionalists as heresy, he did hunger for gold, abduct native people, and ultimately (though unintentionally), destroy the Taino. This book effectively presents their point of view." Writing in the New Advocate, James C. Junhke called Encounter "among the most powerful and disturbing publications of the Columbus Quincentennial." Noting the "pioneering brilliance" of the book, the critic called Yolen's greatest achievement "the reversal of perspective. This book forces us to confront what a disaster it was for the Taino people to be discovered and destroyed by Europeans. Readers young and old will fervently wish never to be encountered by such 'strangers from the sky.'"

Writing in response to Junhke's review in the same publication, Yolen said, "If my book becomes a first step towards the exploration of the meeting between Columbus and the indigenous peoples—and its tragic aftermath—then it has done its work, whatever its flaws, perceived or real." The author concluded, "We cannot change history. But we—and most especially our children—can learn from it so that the next encounters, be they at home, abroad, or in space, may be gentler and mutually respectful. It is a large hope but it is, perhaps, all that we have."

Throughout her career, Yolen has woven bits and pieces of her personal history—and that of her family and friends—into her works. Several of the author's books are directly autobiographical. For example, All Those Secrets of the World, a picture book published in 1991, is set during the two years the author's father was away at war. Yolen recalls how, as a four year old, she watched her father depart by ship. The next day, the fictional Janie and her five-year-old cousin Michael see some tiny specks on the horizon while they are playing on the beach; the specks are ships. Michael teaches Janie a secret of the world, that as he moves farther away, he gets smaller. Two years later, when her father returns, Janie whispers Michael's secret after he tells her that she seems bigger: that when he was so far away, everything seemed smaller, but now that he is here, she is big. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly wrote that "Yolen here relates a bittersweet memory from an important period in her childhood.... This timely nostalgic story is told with simple grace, and Janie's thoughts and experiences are believably childlike." Phyllis G. Sidorsky, in School Library Journal, called All Those Secrets of the World an "affecting piece without an extraneous word and one that is particularly timely today."

Yolen's book And Twelve Chinese Acrobats is a tale for middle graders that is based on family stories about her father's older brother. Set in a Russian village in 1910, the book features Lou the Rascal, a charming troublemaker who keeps getting into scrapes. When Lou is sent to a military school in Kiev, the family—especially narrator Wolf, Lou's youngest brother (and Yolen's father)—is sad. Lou is eventually expelled from military school, and months later he surprises everyone by bringing home a troupe of twelve Chinese acrobats he met while working in a Moscow circus. The acrobats fascinate the locals with their descriptions of an exotic world far removed from the little village. When the acrobats leave the shtel in the spring, Lou's father, recognizing his son's managerial ability, sends him to America to find a place for the family.

Reviewing And Twelve Chinese Acrobats for the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Betsy Hearne noted that "the relationship between the two brothers . . . lends an immediate dynamic to the historical setting," and concluded that the compressed narrative, brief chapters, spacious format, large print, and Jean Gralley's "vivaciously detailed pen-and-ink illustrations dancing across almost every page make this a prime choice for young readers venturing into historical fiction for the first time, or, for that matter, considering a probe into their own family stories." A critic in Kirkus Reviews called And Twelve Chinese Acrobats a book "radiating family warmth, in words, art, and remembrance."

In an article for Horn Book, Yolen stated: "As a writer I am the empress of thieves, taking characters like gargoyles off Parisian churches, the ki-lin (or unicorn) from China, swords in stones from the Celts, landscapes from the Taino people. I have pulled threads from magic tapestries to weave my own new cloth." The author concluded, "Children's literature is about growth. Just as we do not put heavy weights on our children's heads to stunt their growth, we should not put weights on our writers' heads. To do so is to stunt story forever. Stories go beyond race, beyond religion—even when they are about race and religion. The book speaks to individuals in an individual voice. But then it is taken into the reader's life and recreated, re-invigorated, re-visioned. That is what literature is about."

In her essay for SAAS, Yolen mused that her life, "like anyone else's is a patchwork of past and present....I just want to go on writing and discovering my stories for the rest of my life because I know that in my tales I make public what is private, transforming my own joy and sadness into tales for the people. The folk."