Ideas Are the Cheapest Part of Writing: Jane Yolen, 1939-2026

It is not being a good time for lovers of fantasy novels right now. It’s gotten to the point where we speak in hushed tones that surely we’d’ve heard by now if something were bad about Terry Pratchett, you know? We hear the stories and read the posts and we know. But there are some books we keep coming back to, though the authors wrote things other than fantasy in many cases. I actually picked up a book from a Little Free Library the other day that had a Jane Yolen short story in it, though it also had a story by One Of Those Other Writers.

Yolen was born in New York to a psychiatric social worker and a journalist. Her mother quite working to become a stay-at-home mother, and the family moved around based on her father’s work, including a stint in California where he worked as a publicity writer for Warner Bros., I assume, given he worked on Knute Rockne, All American. Yolen herself started writing at an early age, including running a newspaper with her younger brother. In fact, she went into journalism initially before selling her first book, Pirates in Petticoats, on her twenty-second birthday.

Yolen was not just prolific—her 450^th book will be published later this year—but prolific in a wide array of genres. She wrote the YA novel The Devil’s Arithmetic, which was filmed for Showtime starring Kirsten Dunst and Brittany Murphy. Briar Rose, her telling of Sleeping Beauty, is also Holocaust-themed. She wrote the novelization for The Prince of Egypt. Her books appeared twice in the “children tell you what to read” segment of Reading Rainbow. She wrote nonfiction for adults and children and cowrote cookbooks with her daughter and fantasy novels with one of her sons.

I know that I was familiar with Yolen’s work growing up, simply because she was prolific and I was voracious and I would have found her books one way or another. I don’t remember having done so, but I know I must have. But friends of mine are fans of hers, and it was one of them who sent me a message telling me about her death. (Phrased as “Jane Yolen was still alive,” which is a play on her response when I told her early in our friendship that Gregory Peck had died.) I know the books of hers that I’ve acquired have been acquired after making those friends, but that’s still a lot of my life.

At this point, we must pause to grieve a long, rich life. Doubtless there are also many writers out there who were inspired by her. She wrote two books that won the Caldecott Medal, though those are listed as won by the illustrator. To my frustration, her Lewis Carroll Shelf awards—two of those as well—are not on her Wikipedia page under “Awards.” But there is something to be said for great children’s book writers as well; great children’s books inspire adults who continue to read, and Yolen must have been proud to inspire readers as well as writers.