Four hundred: That’s how many books Hatfield author Jane Yolen has published.
“I remember writing each of those books. I don’t remember exactly everything, but that has as much to do with that I’m 82,” she says.
The bookcase where she keeps her published work, she notes, “fills up one whole wall of a room in my house.” The bookcase is so large that “I don’t have a wide enough lens” to capture it all in one photographic image, she quipped.
To reach 400, Yolen has published an average of about six books annually for about 60 years. A few times, she’s published a dozen in one year.
“Most of them are either books of poetry or children’s picture books, which means they’re short, but it doesn’t mean they’ll come out that fast,” Yolen said.
Her latest book, “Bear Outside,” which is illustrated by Jen Corace, is a children’s story that tells the tale of “a little girl who believes she is wearing a bear outside to make her strong, powerful, unafraid,” Yolen said. At its core, it’s about “how we can use imagination to make ourselves feel safe, or powerful, not threatened in any way.”
Among the Hatfield author’s publications are notable titles such as “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” a Holocaust novella, children’s books “Owl Moon,” which won a Caldecott Medal for its illustrations by John Schoenherr, “How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?” and “The Emperor and the Kite,” which is a Caldecott Medal Honor Book.
Over the course of her career, Yolen has received many literary accolades and awards — including six honorary doctorates, the 1989 National Jewish Book Award, the 2009 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2017 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. She also holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, although she considers herself a writer and not an educator.
In much of her work, Yolen draws from life and experiences from her childhood.
Growing up in Manhattan, she recalled that her mother, Isabelle Berlin Yolen, a psychiatric social worker, penned short stories and freelanced as a crossword puzzle designer. Her father, Will Yolen, a Ukrainian Jew who immigrated to the United States with his family, left home at 16 to be a cub reporter.
“He and his younger brothers — there were eight of them — came over when (he was) 6,” Yolen said. “He was always the go-getter of the family — charming, small.”
When she and her brother, Steven Yolen (who became a journalist) were young, their father worked as a police reporter at the New Haven Register. And as an Army lieutenant during World War II, he managed the American Broadcasting Station in Europe, a radio station stood up by the U.S. Office of War Information and the British BBC to counter Nazi propaganda.
Theirs was a house immersed in the literary world.
Her parents were dedicated writers (her father published six books in his lifetime), and “all their friends were writers,” Yolen said. “They knew Hemingway. My dad was the designated ‘make sure drunk James Thurber got home.’ I thought real people held jobs during the day and then went home during the night (to write). Bus drivers, taxi drivers all day long — but since grownups were writers, I was sure they went home at night and wrote.”
For a number of years, her father served as head of The Overseas Press Club in New York City. “Then, he left journalism in order to bring up his family,” Yolen said. He was hired as a departmental vice president at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, which she described as “the largest public relations firm in the world at that point.”
A business proposition inspired him to take up kite flying. That, in turn, set him down a path to become “international kite flying champion,” Yolen said. “He got stories about himself in all sorts of magazines — the Ford Times — and he made himself president of the (33,000-member) International Kitefliers Association.”
It was through her father’s interest in kite flying that Jane Yolen received her first literary break: “My father loved to sign contracts; he loved to sign books. But he hated to write. So he hired me,” she said. The very first book she wrote, “The Young Sportsman’s Guide to Kite Flying,” was ghostwritten under her father’s name.
She has since published a number of other books centered on kites, including “The Emperor and the Kite,” “A Kite for Moon” and “World on a String: The Story of Kites.”
The first book she penned under her own name, “Pirates in Petticoats,” a nonfiction book about female pirates, was published in 1963, following her graduation from Smith College in Northampton, where she earned a degree in English literature. She was 22.
For the most part since then, apart from living in Conway for a few years and another stint in Boston, Yolen has written from her home in Hatfield.
While many of her books are intended for children, Yolen is a dynamic author whose work spans various genres. She’s also an accomplished poet. In addition to the many publishing projects she’s working on at any given time — she has about 130 unsold manuscripts — Yolen writes one poem each day for about 1,000 subscribers.
Some eventually make it into an anthology.
Because Yolen writes in so many genres, she might better be defined by what she is not: “I do not write modern young adult novels, where everyone is breaking into triangles — that’s not me. I have written some mystery novels. I’m not a writer of much horror stuff … And I don’t write drippy love stories,” she said. “I used to say, ‘I don’t do sports books,’ but I have written three sports books for children, and my very first book was about kites.”
A few years ago, she recalled being asked to speak on a panel hosted by Forbes about writing historical novels. At first, Yolen said she was a little bit hesitant to call herself a chapter book author; then she started adding up how many she’s written.
“I stopped counting at 60,” she said. “Some of them were for adults, some of them were for young adults. They were all novels.”
It takes tremendous dedication to write as many books as Yolen has. In this, she credits an overarching writing philosophy that drives her daily work: “BIC,” or “butt in chair”: “This is what I tell my students: I have a muse. And if she comes by when I’m not at my desk, she gives my ideas to someone else,” she said.
Yolen takes a disciplined approach to writing. Every morning, she dresses in business attire, eats breakfast and sits down at a desk in her second-floor home office, where she will work for six to eight hours.
“It’s an under-the-eaves kind of place. It overlooks the back of my property here in Hatfield. It’s on the quiet side, away from the road. It has two desks, a little refrigerator. It has a two-door place for manuscripts. It’s got a nice chair and some bookcases.”
Just as her parents instilled in her a passion for the literary arts, Yolen has passed the literary baton to her three children, Heidi, Adam and Jason Stemple, and grandchildren Maddison Stemple-Piatt and Ariel Stemple, all of whom are published authors.
Now that she’s reached 400 books, Yolen has set her sights on another goal: “My eye is on 500, but I may not live to see it,” Yolen said. “I have another 20, maybe 30 books that are under contract and will be coming out in the next two or three years. I’m getting close.”