WBBT Interview – Jane Yolen! (Part One)

I do not teach but I have been told that sometimes a library science class will assign students to read my blog.  I don’t know if anyone doing such a thing at the moment, but if they are I would like to address anybody and everybody interested in the field of children’s literature who is unfamiliar with Jane Yolen.  I address up-and-coming librarians because those are the only people I can picture that might not have heard of this illustrious writer as of yet.  Jane Yolen is titan amongst children’s authors.  She has produced more books than there are stars in the sky and I’m sure you’ve heard of quite a few.  There’s hardly a topic or area of expertise that she hasn’t covered at one time or another. 

Fuse #8: Your first book was Pirates in Petticoats published in 1963.  From that time onward you have gone on to write (and this is just a rough approximation) one million billion other great children’s books.  Your website puts it at "more than 200" which is modest.  How do you do it?  Do you not sleep?  Do you have a robot butler?  To what do you ascribe your profligacy?

JY: I suspect that all parts of an author’s real life (I am Jewish, Quaker, liberal Democrat, a one-time stander on vigil lines, a sometime pacifist, an onetime folk singer, an oftime deist, a Celtphile and partime Caledonian) insinuate themselves in the writing. What of mine has known Quaker touches? By known I mean "known to me"–only three books. FRIEND: The Story of George Fox and the Quakers (Seabury and newly reprinted  by the Quaker Press of FGC), THE MINSTREL & THE MOUNTAIN, and the coming-of-age scene in THE MAGIC THREE OF SOLATIA. 2 out of 280 books? Maybe not a huge influence.

Fuse #8: My husband urges me in my writing not to go crazy with my superlatives.  That said, you know absolutely everybody!  Just a quick glance at your page of various Friends of Jane Yolen and I see names as diverse as Eric Carle, science fiction writer Jeffrey A. Carver, Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones, Emma Bull, and Bruce Coville amongst many many others.  It is, not to put to fine a point on it, a bit jaw-dropping.  Authors are too often perceived as quiet friendless souls eking out a living in the dry solitary of their empty studios.  To what do you ascribe your natural affinity to the fellows of your profession?

JY: I love writers, adore illustrators. We have lots to talk about. And that page is long overdue for an overhaul. Not dropping anyone, but adding folks like Jo Walton and  Greg Bear and Philip Pullman and others. I can be a real fangirl around people like that.

(CONTINUED IN PART TWO)

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