Jane Yolen, a children’s author who wrote about 450 books in practically every imaginable genre, including history, how-to, science fiction and poetry, and whose immensely popular children’s books, rich in folklore and fantasy, earned her the nickname “America’s Hans Christian Andersen,” died Thursday at her home in Hatfield, a town in western Massachusetts. She was 87 years old.
His family announced the death in a statement.
Ms. Yolen never encountered a style she did not like; His early books also included the history of kites. Yet there was a strong current of deep psychological insight and a sense of wonder throughout almost all of his writings. Many of his works were fables and folktales, whether retellings of old stories or his own, original stories.
“It is the morality books that one considers most characteristic of the prolific Ms. Yolen,” essayist Noel Perrin wrote in The New York Times in 1992, calling her “the modern equivalent of Aesop.”
Her best-known books include “Owl Moon”, a poetic picture book illustrated by John Schoenherr that won the Caldecott Medal in 1988; “The Devil’s Arithmetic” (1988), about a Jewish girl who travels back in time to the Holocaust; and the “Pit Dragon Chronicles” series, fantasy novels published between 1982 and 2009.
She was inspired by the Eastern European Jewish folk tales she heard in her childhood – her father was born in present-day Ukraine – and by the writers she fell in love with in her teens, such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad.
She wrote every day, and could find inspiration in almost anything. “Dream Weaver and Other Tales” (1989) was inspired by Gary Wright’s 1975 song “Dream Weaver”, which was about a romantic interest – although the book focuses on a storyteller instead.
The father and daughter at the center of “Owl Moon” are based on their own husband and daughter. He published his history of kites, “World on a String” (1968), when his father, a publicist, had a client who was a kite maker.
Ms. Yolen said she enjoys writing poetry most. When her husband, David Stemple, was diagnosed with cancer in the early 2000s, she wrote a sonnet on each day of his treatment. When the cancer was in remission, he published the poems as a book titled “The Radiation Sonnets” (2003).
And after her husband’s death, in 2006, she published another book of poems, “Things to Say to a Dead Man” (2011).
Ms. Yolen rejected the idea sometimes put forward by critics or interviewers that she would be better off focusing on any one look or style. He believed that it was all about storytelling, no matter how it was told.
He told The Boston Globe in 1987, “Stories don’t exist on the page or in the mouth. They exist between the writer and the reader, between the teller and the listener.”
Jane Hyatt Yolen was born on February 11, 1939, in Manhattan, into a family of writers. His father, William, was a journalist and later publican; His mother, Isabelle (Berlin) Yolen, was a social worker who wrote short stories and also created crossword puzzles.
“When I was young, I thought everyone was a great writer,” she told Science Fiction Chronicle magazine in 2002, adding that after working day jobs (policeman, fireman, teacher, pediatrician, butcher) they would go home and spend the evening writing.
Jane followed her parents’ guidance from the beginning. He said that his earliest memory is of a poem he wrote when he was 5 years old. In the second grade he wrote the school musical, both lyrics and score. It focused on a group of vegetables, and presented himself as the main carrot.
While at Smith College, he spent summers working as an intern for New England newspapers, and also wrote poetry and fiction. She published her first book, “Pirates in Petticoats” (1961), a history of female swashbucklers, at the age of 22.
He received his degree in English and Russian literature in 1960. He received a master’s degree in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1978.
After college Ms. Yolen returned to New York, where she worked as an editorial assistant at newspapers and book publishers, including Knopf. She wrote for herself in the evenings and on weekends, until she felt confident enough to become a full-time freelancer.
She married Mr. Stemple, a computer scientist, in 1962. He moved to Hatfield in 1966 when he received a teaching position at the University of Massachusetts.
Ms. Yolen is survived by her children, Heidi, Adam and Jason Stemple; five grandchildren; and his brother, Steven.
He worked closely with all three of his children: he co-wrote books with children’s author Heidi; Adam, a composer, composed music to accompany some of his works; And Jason, a photographer, provided images for others.
In her 1987 interview with The Boston Globe, the reporter asked how she could write so much so quickly.
“There are two types of writers, mule team drivers and horse and buggy drivers,” Ms. Yolen said. “The buggy driver writes one story and moves on to the next; the mule driver has several stories at the same time. One way is not better than the other. It so happens that I can work on several things at once.”
