Event Title
Reception Honoring Jane Yolen
Location
Hattiesburg Cultural Center
Start Date
11-4-2012 5:30 PM
End Date
11-4-2012 7:30 PM
Description
Jane Yolen’s first venture into the world of publishing occurred when she and her brother created a newspaper and sold copies to neighbors while growing up in New York City. In high school, she was captain of the basketball team, sang in the choir, competed in debate and edited the school newspaper. Yolen first started publishing poetry at Smith College and completed her first book of poems before graduating in 1960. After college, she became a journalist and considered herself “a poet and journalist/nonfiction writer.” But precisely on her 22nd birthday, she became an author of children’s literature when she sold her first book, Pirates in Petticoats (1963).
Since then, Yolen has become one of the most distinguished authors for children in America, as well as one of the most prolific. She has published fairy tales, fantasy, science fiction, plays, graphic novels, verse and picture books, finding success as a writer for both adults and children. Some of her books encompass time travel and history, while others revise myths of Arthurian legends. As she once described her writing, “I don’t care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.”
According to one critic, Yolen writes with “grace and painstaking care to create tales that create the atmosphere of long ago and other worlds,” as she imaginatively uses “metaphors and symbols in unusual combinations that produce new associations.” She frequently appropriates classical fairy tales, such as Sleeping Ugly, as well as folklore and oral tradition, but some of her best work comes from her own original ideas, such as The Girl Who Loved the Wind and Tales of Wonder. She has also published important non-fiction books such as Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folktale in the Literature of Childhood. Another scholar observes how two of her most famous novels, The Devil’s Arithmetic and Briar Rose, “engage with the boundaries between realism and fantasy” as they rely on both enchantment and history to address the Holocaust. The former, which Dustin Hoffman adapted into a film, tells the story of a modern Jewish girl who is transported through time to Poland in 1942, while the latter depicts a child trying to understand her grandmother’s retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” to discover how she survived a concentration camp.
All together, she has published more than 300 books. Thus, on average, Yolen has published six books a year—roughly one book every 60 days—consistently for half a century. While such an immense body of work is alone impressive, Yolen’s unparalleled talent as one of the most experimental writers for young readers truly showcases her great contribution to children’s literature. There is little wonder why Newsweek calls Yolen the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” and The New York Times praises her as a “modern equivalent of Aesop.”
Receiving the 2012 Southern Miss Medallion is a timely honor, as last year marked her sixth decade of publishing, one which saw 10 new Yolen books. She continues to demonstrate her extraordinary range as an author with a collection of poems about the death of her husband, a novel that places Snow White in West Virginia, a Scandinavian folk tale, a graphic novel about a dragon, and a picture book about a pretty pig.
In one of her personal favorites, The Seeing Stick, Yolen tells the story of a blind Chinese princess encountering an old man who carves vivid stories out of a magical stick, thus teaching her how to see the world through stories. Yolen continues to carve out stories for readers of all ages to see. Let us hope she will continue to carve more.
Reception Honoring Jane Yolen
Hattiesburg Cultural Center
Jane Yolen’s first venture into the world of publishing occurred when she and her brother created a newspaper and sold copies to neighbors while growing up in New York City. In high school, she was captain of the basketball team, sang in the choir, competed in debate and edited the school newspaper. Yolen first started publishing poetry at Smith College and completed her first book of poems before graduating in 1960. After college, she became a journalist and considered herself “a poet and journalist/nonfiction writer.” But precisely on her 22nd birthday, she became an author of children’s literature when she sold her first book, Pirates in Petticoats (1963).
Since then, Yolen has become one of the most distinguished authors for children in America, as well as one of the most prolific. She has published fairy tales, fantasy, science fiction, plays, graphic novels, verse and picture books, finding success as a writer for both adults and children. Some of her books encompass time travel and history, while others revise myths of Arthurian legends. As she once described her writing, “I don’t care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.”
According to one critic, Yolen writes with “grace and painstaking care to create tales that create the atmosphere of long ago and other worlds,” as she imaginatively uses “metaphors and symbols in unusual combinations that produce new associations.” She frequently appropriates classical fairy tales, such as Sleeping Ugly, as well as folklore and oral tradition, but some of her best work comes from her own original ideas, such as The Girl Who Loved the Wind and Tales of Wonder. She has also published important non-fiction books such as Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folktale in the Literature of Childhood. Another scholar observes how two of her most famous novels, The Devil’s Arithmetic and Briar Rose, “engage with the boundaries between realism and fantasy” as they rely on both enchantment and history to address the Holocaust. The former, which Dustin Hoffman adapted into a film, tells the story of a modern Jewish girl who is transported through time to Poland in 1942, while the latter depicts a child trying to understand her grandmother’s retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” to discover how she survived a concentration camp.
All together, she has published more than 300 books. Thus, on average, Yolen has published six books a year—roughly one book every 60 days—consistently for half a century. While such an immense body of work is alone impressive, Yolen’s unparalleled talent as one of the most experimental writers for young readers truly showcases her great contribution to children’s literature. There is little wonder why Newsweek calls Yolen the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” and The New York Times praises her as a “modern equivalent of Aesop.”
Receiving the 2012 Southern Miss Medallion is a timely honor, as last year marked her sixth decade of publishing, one which saw 10 new Yolen books. She continues to demonstrate her extraordinary range as an author with a collection of poems about the death of her husband, a novel that places Snow White in West Virginia, a Scandinavian folk tale, a graphic novel about a dragon, and a picture book about a pretty pig.
In one of her personal favorites, The Seeing Stick, Yolen tells the story of a blind Chinese princess encountering an old man who carves vivid stories out of a magical stick, thus teaching her how to see the world through stories. Yolen continues to carve out stories for readers of all ages to see. Let us hope she will continue to carve more.
Comments
Sponsored by the Southern Breeze Region of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators