Children's book author Jane Yolen has died. She was 87 years old. A longtime resident of Hatfield, Massachusetts, Yolen was dubbed by Newsweek Magazine "America's Hans Christian Andersen."
Among her well known works are the Caldecott Medal winning picture book "Owl Moon" and her stories about dinosaurs doing very un-dinosaur like things.
In 2010 Yolen told NEPM her publishers were pushing her to use more simple language — that for children she was too literary. She disagreed.
"I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words," Yolen said.
Her greatest hope as a writer she said was to share a sense of what matters most in life; to her it was honesty.
"Standing up for the underdog, being heroic in the small sense, if not the large sense," Yolen said, adding she didn't care "if it's a fantasy novel where people are doing great deeds or a small book like "Elsie's Bird," where she does a very heroic thing."
Fifteen years ago "Elsie's Bird" was Yolen's 300th book. At the time of her death she had written more than 400. Over the course of her long writing career, Yolen also took on heavier topics for her young readers, writing novels about the Holocaust and eminent domain.
This post includes a story first reported by NEPR for NPR.
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