Updated June 18, 2026 at 1:58 PM CDT
The author Jane Yolen published an astonishing number of books in her lifetime — more than 450.
She died at 87 last week at her home in Hatfield, Mass. Her residence there anchored a career in which Yolen wrote picture books, like the hugely popular How Do Dinosaurs … ? series. But she also wrote across age groups and genres, including young adult fiction, fantasy, poetry and more.
Yolen's daughter, Heidi Stemple, says her mom had a favorite saying: "Touch magic. Pass it on."
That's what Yolen did over more than six decades as a writer. She was born in Manhattan in 1939 but spent much of her adult life in Western Massachusetts. In addition to Heidi Stemple, Yolen had two sons, Adam and Jason Stemple, and she collaborated on creative projects with all three of her children.
"It was really her dream for all of us to work with her," Heidi Stemple says.
Yolen was also known for reimagining classic folk and fairytales. The New York Times called her "a modern equivalent of Aesop," and Newsweek dubbed her "the Hans Christian Andersen of America."
But Yolen told her family the comparison to the Danish author wasn't quite right.
"What she used to remind people was — and we all joke about this — that she was not the Hans Christian Andersen of America," Stemple says. "She was the Hans Jewish Andersen of America."
Yolen's Jewish identity shaped books like Briar Rose and The Devil's Arithmetic, both set during the Holocaust. In the latter, a Jewish American girl travels back in time to 1942 Poland, where she is sent to a concentration camp.
Pamela Anderson teaches English at a junior high school in Chandler, Okla. She said she assigns The Devil's Arithmetic, which came out in 1988, to her 8th grade students, many of whom know little about the Holocaust before stepping into her classroom.
"I am very strong on author legitimacy," Anderson says. "[Yolen] didn't just off the cuff write a book about the Holocaust. She gathered information. So the book is actually an amalgam of concentration camps, an amalgam of the stories that she learned."
As for the response in her classroom, Anderson says, "I've never had a student tell me they didn't like the book."
The editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who shepherded the 1992 book Briar Rose for publication, said Yolen's resonance with young readers was rooted in her fundamental sense of humanity.
"It helps that, like many great children's writers and educators and librarians, she regarded children as simply human beings who simply aren't as big and experienced as us," Nielsen Hayden, who was also a friend of Yolen's, said.
The author also didn't shy away from stretching children's vocabularies. In a 2010 story on NPR's Weekend Edition, Yolen recalled a time when she refused an editor's request to swap the word "lavalier" for a more kid-friendly synonym in her 1987 book Piggins.
"The editor first said, I think we can better just say necklace, I think lavalier's too big a word for kids this age," Yolen said. "But we held the fort. We said yes, absolutely, it's going to be lavalier."
And the decision paid off.
"When Jane Dyer, the illustrator, and I went on a book tour together, every school we went to the kids had voted that lavalier was their favorite new word."
In addition to her talents as a writer, Nielsen Hayden says, Yolen was also a gifted social connector. There were many times over the course of their friendship that he learned of Yolen's surprising connections to people like author Tracy Kidder, artist Barry Moser — and even Eleanor Roosevelt.
And Yolen's kitchen in Hatfield was a frequent gathering place for the science fiction and fantasy literary universe. Author Bruce Coville said he shared a "raucous and merry" friendship with Yolen over more than 40 years.
"She never pulled rank, even when I was a raw newcomer and she, a well-established professional," Coville said in an email. "She always said, 'Don't put me on a pedestal, I might fall off and break an ankle!'"
One of her most famous books, Owl Moon, won a Caldecott Medal in 1988. It was illustrated by John Schoenherr.
The picture book is about a father who — one winter night — takes his young daughter into the snowy woods in search of an owl. Yolen's daughter Heidi Stemple calls it her "forever favorite."
"My dad is Pa and I am the little girl, though my brothers will argue that he took all of us owl-ing, which is very true," she says. "But my mom made it a little girl and told me it was me so I'm sticking with that."
In the last weeks of Yolen's life, Stemple says she read Owl Moon to her mom every day. The last page made Stemple particularly emotional.
"When you go owling, you don't need words or warm or anything but hope," the story goes. "That's what Pa says. The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining Owl Moon."
Yolen's 454th book will be published this July. Stemple says many posthumous stories will follow.
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