Jane Yolen's Blog, page 9

How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodbye

Scholastic Press (September 28, 2021)
Illustrated by Mark Teague
ISBN-10: 1338363352
ISBN-13: 978-1338363357

Saying goodbye is hard, even for dinosaurs.

When they have to part from a loved one, they might cry, or hide in their bedrooms, or even write “DON’T GO!” on the wall. But with a little courage, they can face their fears. They can tell grown-ups how they’re feeling and know that time apart can still be filled with love.

This humorous and heartfelt picture book from bestselling duo Jane Yolen and Mark Teague will teach young readers how to say goodbye with poise and grace — with laugh-out-loud antics along the way!

Each How Do Dinosaurs book is a combination of childish antics followed by a gentle lesson — with over 19 million books in print.

What reviewers have said:

“This humorous and heartfelt picture book from bestselling duo Jane Yolen and Mark Teague will teach young readers how to say goodbye with poise and grace — with laugh-out-loud antics along the way!” — YA and Kids Books Central“This rib-tickling bedtime fare packs plenty of appeal.” ― Publishers Weekly“Fans of any of the previous entries will rejoice at this new addition, which uses exaggeration and humor to help children acknowledge and deal with their dinosaur-sized emotions.” — School Library Journal

Eeny Up Above

Crocodile Books (November 2, 2021)
Illustrated by Kathryn Brown
ISBN-10: 1623718651
ISBN-13: 978-1623718657

After the first book came out–Eeny Meeny Miney Mole from HAacourt, the company itself changed hands. Editors (including mine) left, and no one wanted the second book. But years later, (20 Years maybe?) it has found a new home. The two books are about the three mole sisters who live in a deep dark hole. I have now written a third book abut them. Hope it doesn’t take that long to get it out!

 

What reviewers have said:

“An endearing picture book … The beautifully worded text and strong but delicate illustrations create a charm all their own … Although Eeny first braved the Up Above in Yolen and Brown’s Eeny, Meeny, Miney Mole (2018), familiarity with the earlier book is not a prerequisite for enjoying this satisfying story of a little mole who bravely ventures forth and returns to tell the tale.” — Booklist“Like Spring … Brown’s soft illustrations echo Beatrix Potter’s in both delicacy and whimsy, and Yolen’s story of bravery justified should put a smile in readers’ hearts.” — Kirkus Reviews“PreSchool-Grade 1―The text is carefully constructed, with thoughts building upon one another and reality clothed in poetic contemplation. This is also a book of opposites, of questions, and of astonishing answers… The characters have such full and individual personalities, and the vision of all the rooms visited is so complete, that readers will be drawn into each earth-brown picture. Young Eeny is especially engaging as she pulls her doll in its acorn wagon, a shovel by her side, energy and innocent determination in each stride. A notable effort by both author and illustrator.” ― School Library Journal“Just as children often wonder about the earth beneath their feet, the littlest mole here sets out to discover the world ‘Up Above.’ When Eeny is told by her sisters that there is light as well as darkness, winter and summer too, she tries to imagine these concepts in familiar terms, envisioning light, for example, spreading like a blanket. Finally she burrows out of her hole and experiences spring. In its celebration of the duality and complexity of nature, Yolen’s inventive text abounds with wisdom and humor―her imagery and linguistic skills lift the tale far above the ordinary. The older moles scold, ‘Don’t listen to addlepated centipedes’―using the kind of large, old-fashioned words children love to hear. When Eeny ponders things she has never seen, she thinks imagistically, like a poet: ‘She wondered if light . . . touched in and out like the thread in the hem of a dress.’ Brown’s gracefully droll watercolors―more mature in technique than in her earlier Mule dred―portray the underworld with fanciful touches: an acorn serves as a doll’s carriage, a jonquil becomes a periscope. The palette of befogged earth tones is complemented by scattered spots of luminescence when lanterns, fire and glass light up the underworld.” ― Publishers Weekly

Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After

Holy Cow! Press (October 12, 2021)
ISBN-10: 0998601098
ISBN-13: 978- 0998601090

I write a poem a day and send them to subscribers for free, though once a month subscribers are supposed to either purchase a book or reread one of mine they already have, or borrow a book of mine from the library. Been doing this close to twenty years now. (To join: http://eepurl.com/bs28ab)

I already have  ten books of adult poetry that have come put of that daily poem work,  and Kaddish–a book of poems in two parts, one feminist Biblical midrash and the other poems about the Holocaust–is the eleventh. The poetry publisher, Holy Cow! Press already did three of my books, one of which–EKATERINIOSLAV–is about my father’s family, who lived in the Ukraine for centuries, escaping the bullying of the Tsar’s “Fists” in 1914, well before the Holocaust. We were the lucky ones.

What reviewers have said:“Jane Yolen’s poems of witness and warning will grab you by the heart and squeeze. There’s no turning away, especially from the narratives of Holocaust horrors, thankfully leavened by notes of hope. Bridging past and present through voices that bring both to life, Yolen reminds us that the Jewish memory is long, and makes us grateful for it.”―Nikki Grimes, author of Ordinary Hazards, a memoir in verse; Winner, 2017 Children’s Literature Legacy Medal“In Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After, Jane Yolen leads the reader to a place where “men are shot for being cold/for sneezing, for freezing,” where “a minyan of bones/dances the hora,” where the showers have “walls too thick/the gas too quick.” These are necessary poems of witness, reminding the reader that “we are all broken/we are all glass.” Life is precious. Life is fragile. Will humankind ever learn from its mistakes? These fine poems forbid us to forget and beg us to do better. They are more relevant today than ever before.”–Lesléa Newman, author of I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father“In Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After, Jane Yolen expertly weaves together figures of the Jewish faith like Goliath, Sarah, and Esther, alongside story characters such as Rumpelstiltskin, Anansi and Raven, all interconnected with known and unknown victims of the Holocaust. Calling upon a variety of poetic forms, Yolen takes the reader on a questioning journey through Jewish history, universal notions of motherhood, and the stark lens of the photograph, showing us ‘This, the story / no one wants to tell, / must be told.’ Full of anguish and insight, her poetry reveals that ‘… story sticks / when memory fails,’ a powerful witness to both inhumanity and hope.”–Sylvia Vardell“In her poem, ‘Shoes: Holocaust Museum, Washington DC,’ Jane Yolen writes: ‘I walk with foreknowledge into the museum, /sure it has nothing to teach me.’ After all, hasn’t she already written two of the classic Holocaust novels of our time, as well as numerous poems and yes, picture books on the subject? This is how I felt opening KADDISH: Before the Holocaust and After, Yolen’s latest collection of poems. I’ve already read most of the 400 plus (no typo) books she has written; including all of her poetry for adults. And I’ve taught and lectured about Poetry of the Holocaust. What could possibly be left to learn?‘So why now,’ the second stanza of Shoes, continues, ‘am I stunned, undone, incapable of moving on?’ And that is how I felt as I closed the volume, ‘stunned and undone’ and, as Yolen says in another poem: ‘uplifted, gifted, strengthened, /given breadth and breath.’After a career that has garnered every conceivable kudo, how can a poet keep pushing herself, digging deeper, and finding new ground to plow? This collection was heartbreaking and breathtaking. Kaddish starts with creation itself, and brings us up to date with the January 6th, 2021 attempted coup in our own country. In between there is Midrashim, mitzvahs, miracles, martyrs, mishigas, and a love of language underscored by the knowledge of what words can do. I can do no better than to end by quoting from this book once again: ‘These are the stories/no one wants to tell/ but must be told/…because story sticks /when memory fails.’”–Rich Michelson, owner of the Michelson Gallery in Northampton, Mass, is a much-published poet and children’s book writer, and former poet laureate of Northampton.

Showing Up

I have talked about “showing up” before. But here are some further–though rather scrambled–thoughts about it.

Being a writer–or any kind of artist–is essential a selfish activity. Note I don’t, as far too many people do, call it a “lonely” job. Maybe an alone job, but lonely? Not when I am surrounded by my invisible friends. Invisible to you, perhaps, but not to me. We converse, argue (I don’t always get my way), go rollicking down new roads, find adventures, weep together, pray together, pry together, get into all kinds of mischief, trouble, danger, and despair. Some of us make it to the other end of the road, but not all. Along the way I have killed my darlings, my best friends, my favorite pets, a high king or two, and the one no child reader has ever forgiven me for–a dragon named Heart’s Blood.

But I do this in the privacy of my own mind. And I can not nor will not let you in until I am done with it. And then it becomes not just my story, herstory, history–but YOUR story, too. And you dear reader, will take it even further than I ever could because you make it your own.

But none of this happens unless I, in the lone-ness of my own writing space show up, do my job, get it done.(It has just now occurred to me, after years of teaching Le Guin’s “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas” at Smith College that whatever else it is, the novelette is a metaphor for the writer in her cell.)

What does this mean in real time? That I am in a book a lot longer than you will ever be. You can read Devil’s Arithmetic in a day or over a week or maybe if you are slow it can take you a month. But I was stuck in it for a year and a half, in that hellhole called the Holocaust! You can buzz through Owl Moon in mere minutes. I worked on it consciously and subconsciously for fifteen years. You can sit down with Sword of the Rightful King, my Arthurian novel, and make it through successfully in a week or ten days if you savor it slowly. But for me, from the time I wrote it first as a short story to the completion of the novel was twenty years.

THAT’S what I mean about showing up. If you have the guts to do it.

And the time? Well no little time fairy is going to drop a package of it on you. You have to take time. Steal it by the bucketload from the rest of your life. Be selfish. Ignore lunching with friends until the work gets done.

Just write the damn book.

Rum Pum Pum

Holiday House (September 15, 2020)
Illustrated by Anjan Sarkar
ISBN-10: 0823441008
ISBN-13: 978- 0823441006

So, David L. Harrison was posting on his personal web page about how when his son (now in his 60s I believe) was a boy, David had always promised to write him a story about a lonely tiger, but never did. And so I wrote back (also on David’s site) the beginning of the story set in India and after we had this open to the public several pages going on, I said: “Think it’s time to take this offline and really go for it.”And we did.

We sold it to Holiday House’s Grace Maccarrone and with pictures by the wonderful British illustrator Anjan Sarkar, it became a book.

What reviewers have said:

Bear Outside

Neal Porter Books (March 2, 2021)
Illustrated by Jen Corace
ISBN-10: 0823446131
ISBN-13: 978- 0823446131

Bear Outside turned out to be my first ever book with the famed editor Neal Porter and my (accidentally) 400th book. It has an interesting backstory.

About five years before I wrote and sold A BEAR OUTSIDE, I had been helping one of my editors find an illustrator for a different bear book of mine (quick how many bear books do you think I have published?). That book was very different, and wildly funny, but I found Corace’s website during my bear scans, loved her work, and she had this bizarre drawing of a little girl staring out of a bear’s mouth. There’s a story there I thought (as I often do) but got no more than that. Sent the website to the editor who knew (as I already knew) that Jen was not going to be his choice for a A BEAR SAT ON MY PORCH TODAY. But five years or so later, still remembering that picture, I wrote the story. Neal snapped it up and loved the backstory so much, he contacted Jen and got her on the project before he told either me or  my agent that he was doing the book. She got to it relatively quickly and it became a  published book in time to snag the 400th! slot. Ah, fame. Ah, obsession! Ah, coincidence. Ah, Bears!!

 

What reviewers have said:“…captures the essence of inner strength in this sensitive portrayal of a girl and the bear who accompanies her….a sophisticated depiction of a child’s relationship with her inner strength.” —Publishers Weekly“An ode to kids who march to their own bear, and a guide for the imaginative ones in touch with their needs and boundaries. It’s wonderful.” —Only Picture Books

 

 

Crow Not Crow — Teacher’s Guide

A teacher’s guide to Crow Not Crow by Cornell Labs with nine activities.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Last Week of 2020

 

I had one grandchild with Covid (she’s doing fine, now, thanks). One in full bubble because her best friend had Covid. One son because someone at work had Covid. All fine. But the fear never leaves. And I will be 82 in February, Peter will be 84 in June.

So what do I do? I write.

I write out of fear and love. I write because my head always seems full of ideas. So many I give then away—to my writing children and grandchildren, to my friends, to my students. And I still have too many to get down.

 

Ideas are cheap. And my old friend (alas not doing well himself) Norton Juster once said to a school child when asked were he got his ideas,cracked, :”From a Post Box in Poughkeepsie.” Since he hasn’t yet written about that, I think I might borrow it.

But actually, ever time I go anywhere, read anything, overhear a conversation, mis-hear the words of a song, see a bird alight in a tree, a turtle overcome a stone as if it were climbing a mountain, find a bear on my porch, or watch a black dog stamp her foot at a squirrel on the porch, I have the makings of a poem or a picture book, or a song, or a short story, some flash fiction, or possibly a novel.

However, ideas are cheap and everywhere. Even in a postbox. But what to do with them after—och, lassie, there’s the hard work.

 

You need time and energy, and a certain low threshold of boredom to get to it. And While I have worried about the Covid pandemic for other people, and  met my new husband (widow to widower) during it, the virus has allowed both of us the time to get to know one another. (We had dated for a couple of months in college, so that was 63-year-break! And both had strong, love-filled marriages till the cancer deaths of our spouses.) So what did I do with the rest of the quarantine time?

 

I write, I wrote, I have written.

Rewrote old picture book mss till they were salable. Finished a short novel I had started many years ago. Wrote a poem-a-day for 1047 subscribers. Wrote some flash fiction, am working on a musical, a possible TV series, some songs for different folk/rock groups. I wrote some introductions to other folks anthologies and collections. And written books with my daughter Heidi, trwo of my grandkids, my friend David L. Harrison, and my new husband Peter Tacy. (Not all have sold. YET!!!

 

Oh, and the occasional letter, love note, correction of facts to an editor, interviews,

blog posts, and lists. Lists of things to remember, things to do  or to buy, lists of where mss are

or where I want them to go, list of books that need de-doing (or doing),  lists of shopping for the nice people who are shopping for us during the pandemic, lists of promises made, and promises to make.

But mostly I write.

And somehow, besides fear and concern, and upset letters to editors and politicians,

I have written a humongous amount since January last.

AND my 400th book will be coming out sometime in 2021. Now if only the editors will tell me when those books are going to burst onto the field, I will be able to tell you which one is

the 400th. All I can tell you is: it may be a picture book, a board book, a book of adult Jewish poems, a book of adult science fiction poems, a novel, an easy reader, or something else that sneaks in at the last minute to take the coveted spot.

 

I will be as surprised as you or the editor of the 40th book, or any  bookseller. Possible as surprised as the book itself.

Stay tuned.

Jane

 

 

Plymouth Rocks

Charlesbridge (September 8, 2020)

Illustrated by Sam Streed

ISBN-10: 1580896855

ISBN-13: 978- 1580896856

So the phone rings. My Charlesbridge editor said, “I have a book idea for you.” (This happens, but rarely.)

I said…”Okay.”

“In two years it’s going to be the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock. Big celebrations and. . . “

“It didn’t happen, you know,” I said, figuring she knew. She was a Harvard graduate after all.

“What didn’t happen?”

“They didn’t land on a rock. They landed on one end of Cape Cod.”

There was silence. Then she said, “But the celebration… “

I said, “If I can find a way to make it work and tell the truth I will.”

Two days later I sent her an email. “Starting on it. It’s called Plymouth Rocks!”

And three weeks, later, dear Reader, she bought it. Though there were weeks and weeks of revisions after.

 

 

Interrupting Cow and the Chicken Crossing the Road

Simon Spotlight (December 8, 2020)

Illustrated by Joelle Dreidemy

ISBN-10: 1534481591

ISBN-13: 978- 1534481596

As I began writing the second Interrupting Cow book (likely to be six of them) about a chicken–a Rhode Island Red– and why it crosses the road (each one uses an old joke at its center…the next two are about an old dog learning new tricks and a horse of a different color) I realized that all of Cow’s new friends, her accidental herd if you will, are different colors and different kinds of animals. A virtual variety. Just happened that way. These Easy-step-into-reading books are special favorites of mine as the original joke about the Interrupting Cow, was my grandchild Ari’s favorite when they were young. They must have told it to me a hundred times, and always made the both of us laugh.

The Interrupting Cow Series:

Interrupting Cow
Interrupting Cow and the Chicken Crossing the Road