Jane Yolen celebrates 400th book
Children’s literature icon Jane Yolen hit a milestone last month when she published her 400th book. But Yolen, a graduate of Staples High School in Westport, said that achievement should probably come with an asterisk. That’s because her latest picture book, “Bear Outside,” is really her 401st book.
Long before Yolen, 82, was known for such kid-lit classics as “Owl Moon” and “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” she was the daughter of a former newspaper man who was also an international kite-flying champion. Given his credentials, he was asked to write a guide for young kite flyers. He accepted, but there was a slight problem.
“My father hated writing,” said Yolen, who now lives in Hatfield, Mass. “He signed the contract (for the kite-flying book), then handed it off to me and said ‘You write it.’”
That’s why one of Yolen’s first writing credits isn’t under her name, and thus seldom gets counted as part of her impressive body of work, which spans roughly six decades.
Happenstance and coincidence are actually hallmarks of Yolen’s life and career. It was, for example, something of a fluke that her family lived in Westport for several years. She grew up in New York and was actually at camp in Vermont when her family suddenly decided to pick up and move to Westport because it was safer.
“I wasn’t happy,” said Yolen, who left Connecticut shortly after graduating high school.
Even her storied career in children’s literature was something of an accident, she said. While a student at Smith College, Yolen was mainly interested in poetry and journalism, and received rewards for both sorts of writing.
Writing for children, she said, never occurred to her. But someone at Smith had given Yolen’s name to the storied writer and editor Judith Jones, who called Yolen and asked if she had a book manuscript she could look at.
“I said, ‘Yes I do,’ which was a lie,” Yolen said. “I didn’t have a book manuscript. I had a lot of poetry.”
But Yolen had promised a book manuscript and didn’t want to show up without one. “I thought ‘What’s fast?’” she said. “I decided to write children’s books. They were lousy, but I didn’t know that.”
Yolen’s books were rejected, but the idea of writing children’s books stuck with her. She took a course in writing for children and eventually got better at it. She published her first two books — the nonfiction book “Pirates in Petticoats” and the picture book “See This Little Line” — in 1963.
Since then, Yolen has collected buckets of awards, including the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, three World Fantasy Awards, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, two Golden Kite Awards, the Jewish Book Award and the Massachusetts Center for the Book award.
Getting into children’s literature “was one of those wonderful things that happens to you when your back is turned.”
It’s possible that the same could be said for her latest book, “Bear Outside,” which was published on March 2.
Yolen said she was inspired to write the book — about a girl who imagines wearing a bear as a protective shell — after looking at art by potential illustrators for another book she was working on.
Some pictures by artist Jen Corace of a girl wearing a bear wasn’t right for the book Yolen was working on, but the image stayed with her. “I knew it was something,” Yolen said.
Eventually, the picture led to the creation of “Bear Outside,” which Corace illustrated. Yolen said the book is about the ways people try to protect themselves.
The girl in the book, Yolen said, “wears the bear like a shield until she is ready to be alone. It wasn’t until I was talking to someone else about book that I realized that was story of my life. This was a book for me.”
Though this is the 400th book she’s published under her name, it is far from the last, Yolen said. She has at least four more titles coming out this year.
Yolen said she’s always inspired by the world around her, and tries to keep funneling that inspiration into something new.
“Ideas are cheap,” she said. “They’re everywhere. It’s really what you do with those ideas that come in.”