Remembering Jane Yolen

REMEMBERING JANE YOLEN

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and the children’s book world, is saddened by the news that author, mentor and friend, Jane Yolen, has died. She was 87 and her loss cannot be measured.

For the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, her passing is especially poignant. She was with us at our founding in 1971 and played a significant role in our development.

We first met Jane through Sue Alexander, another early member. Sue had seen Jane speak at a children’s book event in Colorado and wondered whether she would be willing to keynote our very first conference, even though we were expecting only about 50 attendees. Without hesitation Jane replied YES! Over the next half century, despite her busy schedule, she supported the organization, mentored members, and became a warm and faithful friend. We mourn her passing.

In retrospect, it seems that Jane was bound for a career in the arts from an early age. At seven years old, she once told a biographer how she and her younger brother, Steven, would print up and distribute a weekly newsletter to their friends and relatives in their New York neighborhood.

Following high school, Jane moved to Massachusetts and enrolled in Smith College. It was there that she discovered her love for the written word. Most of her early work was in poetry, and her poems were so moving that year after year she won the award for best poetry.

After college Jane moved to New York and found work as an editor at a respected publishing house. Although she was a good editor, poetry remained her real passion. That was until one day, on a whim, she switched gears and wrote a children’s book titled Pirates in Petticoats.

Proud of the story, she sent it off to a publishing house. One wintry day in February, she received a letter from the publisher informing her that they wanted her book! The good news called for a double celebration, as it was also her birthday. She was turning twenty- two.

Coincidence? Maybe? But, in any case, the rest is literary history.

Jane went on to write more than 400 books across nearly every category. These books were not assembly line tales cranked out featuring cookie cutter characters and tired plots. No matter the genre, Jane's books were penned with the utmost concern for the child who might someday pick them up and devote their time to reading the words she wrote.

This is something we might all aspire to do.

Jane’s books have won countless awards including a Caldecott Medal, two Christopher Medals, two Nebula Awards, three World Fantasy Awards, a Regina Medal, and many more. If you wish you can find a complete list online.

There is one accolade that does not carry with it a trophy, a certificate, or a medal. Instead, it is a simple celebration of her work, bestowed upon her by her many peers:

THE MODERN DAY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Along with her loving children, Heidi, Jason, and Adam, and her husband, Peter, we mourn her loss. We know her books will live on for generations to come.

Written by Stephen Mooser

7 Books in 21 Years: Lee's Tips on Creating and Revising

This week's tips are on Creating and Revising – things I wish I'd known back when I was starting out, and that I'm happy to pass along to you now.

1) What you bring is YOU. You are the special sauce.

It isn't having the best idea (ideas are important) but it's how you execute the idea that makes it work or not work.

Ultimately, the thing you're bringing to every project is the thing no one else has... YOU. 

So make your work as YOU as you possibly can. This is the secret to "voice." Tell your story in a way that is uniquely yours. That was the turning point with my own writing, and I wish I'd learned it sooner.

Cheers to Esther Hershenhorn, who asked me when giving me an incredibly kind critique of one of my first picture book manuscripts, which was about manners (with a burping frog and princess) if that was really what I was passionate to write. It wasn't. And I'm proud to now have three picture books (and counting) published about things I truly am passionate about.

Red and Green and Blue and White is about community.

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach is about love.

And 

Like THAT Eleanor is about allyship.

Those are all things I am really passionate about. 

And they're all uniquely "Lee" -- while each picture book is very different from the others, they all are stories told with my unique voice and take. Which is probably a big part of why they found publishing homes.

2) Collect the tips that work for you, and don't sweat the rest.

Everyone has a different take on how they approach doing their creative work. I've listened to so many different approaches, and over time I've figured out what works for me. 

Perhaps the best advice that's worked for me is from Linda Sue Park, who shared that when her own writing time got more limited, she started doing 12 min writing sprints. She sets her timer for 12 minutes on her phone, and then tells herself she just has to focus for 12 minutes. If it's going well, and she has the time, she'll do another 12 minutes. The most she'd done in a row was 5, meaning 60 minutes. 

This changed my creative life. I have a pretty demanding (and awesome) day job, and often I was holding off on writing until I had big blocks of 3 hours or more to really dig in. This meant, though, that I was only writing once every week or two. 

Doing the writing sprints, repeating it nearly every day, has made me SO much more productive. What I've found is that by doing a little bit, every day, it really adds up. Also, the project seems to always be in the back of my mind, with my subconscious working on it, and getting back into it is much faster.

The secret of this is that I don't have any internal resistance to 12 minutes. I can nearly always say, okay, I have twelve minutes to write. And I can sit and do it, even at the end of a long and challenging day. (Though I do much better work if I'm doing my 12 minutes before everything else.)

Also, I don't do this 365 days a year. My creativity needs time off, sort of like seasons. Sprout, grow, harvest, plant the seed and wait to sprout again...

It's what works for me. Figure out what works for you, and don't worry about the rest.

3) Know your category. Read books in the area you're working to publish in.

Credit another tip (or maybe it was a challenge) to Linda Sue Park. She said if you're going to write a picture book, you should read 1,000 picture books. That's a LOT, but when you are really well-read in your category, you start to understand it all much better.

You can see the structure behind the words, you can figure out which stories resonate, and why, you can see patterns.

And it helps you see how your own work might fit in, push the boundaries, be pitched and sold.

It's also really helpful when someone (agent or editor) asks for comps.

4) You can always learn more and get better.

I will never forget the moment at an SCBWI conference intensive when there were a whole bunch of famous authors teaching and giving us exercises, and after teaching her section, Jane Yolen comes and sits next to me to do the just-assigned-by-someone-else exercise, just like I was.

I looked at Jane and, knowing she had hundreds (no exaggeration) of books published, asked, "Why are you doing the exercise?"

And she said something along the lines of 'The minute I stop learning I'll be dead.' 

I can't recall the exercise we were doing, but I do hold onto this gem -- we can always learn more and get better at our craft.

5) The publishing business is cyclical.

"Picture books are dead!" ... "It's the golden age of picture books." ... "Picture books are impossible to sell right now."

"Middle grade is hot!" ... "You can't sell middle grade right now." ...

Just wait. It comes around. Work on what you're most passionate to work on. Let your agent sweat the merry-go-round of what's hot. 

Maybe a manuscript can't find a home now, but will find one in a few years.

Know that you're more than one story,.

And the business is cyclical.

6) Think of revision as Re-vision. 

This word play may come off a little corny, but don't get stuck in the words of your story. Allow yourself, in the process of revision, to pull back and see more than the sentences. Look at the story behind the words, the character arcs and motivations, the journey of the reader's emotions.

Kate Messner shared a very cool spreadsheet she uses to track elements chapter to chapter, and for longer work I've found that really helpful.

For picture books, sometimes it takes coming at the story from a whole new angle.

Play with it. 

Revision is your time to make your story even more you, even more the story you want to tell.

7) Enjoy the adventure. Celebrate every moment you can.

There are going to be hard moments on this publishing journey, and in the face of our very human negative bias (where we focus on the bad rather than the good) it is so important to celebrate the wins.

The kind/personalized rejection.

The revise-and-re-offer request.

The expression of interest.

The manuscript going to acquisitions.

The offer.

The signed contract.

The editorial letter.

The revised manuscript sent in.

... all the steps towards the book being a reality: the editing, the interior and cover design, the marketing, the kind reviews, the accolades your book does get, and then your book reaching adult readers, and librarians, and booksellers, and teachers, and parents, and kiddos themselves...

and every so often, hearing from a reader, with their thanks and appreciation.

Take a moment to hold onto and celebrate those positive moments.

A reader I don't know called Like THAT Eleanor:

"A Perfect Pride Picture Book" and "a fantastic age appropriate story about how a kid can be an ally."

That's a win right there, and worth celebrating!

I hope you'll take the time to celebrate your wins, too. Every one of them. They'll sustain you.

I keep a file of nice things folks have said to me about my writing, with a few printed out and posted on my wall. Just to remind me: I've had wins. I can do this.

And you can, too.

**

That's this week's tips. Next week, my seven tips on getting published.

Until then,

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Listen To The New Season of SCBWI's Podcast Conversations!

We're delighted to announce a new season of SCBWI podcasts, now available for FREE for everyone! (You can tune in wherever you do your podcast listening.)

The first two episodes have already posted, so go listen to the great conversations Theo Baker had with Mac Barnett and Jane Yolen.

If you check out SCBWI on instagram, you can hear short excerpts from each discussion - a taste of the full episode!

Coming up are in-depth, hang-out discussions with Jacqueline Woodson, Dan Santat, Sergio Ruzzier, Kate Mesner, Grace Lin, Derrick Barnes, and many more!

Enjoy!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Inspiration: Jane Yolen on the nearly 17 years it took her to write "a Jewish Book"

Jane's essay at the Jewish Book Council website, "If the Muse Comes Calling: Jane Yolen on Writing," is about the evolution of her Jewish dragon short story and novella, written with her son Adam, The Last Tsar’s Drag­ons.

It also includes a very telling and thought-provokingly honest account of how the first 17 years of Jane's writing "did not fea­ture any­one or any­thing Jewish."

Here's how Jane describes what happened next:

"And then in the 1980s, one of my edi­tors, who hap­pened to be a rabbi’s wife, asked me why I had nev­er writ­ten a Jew­ish book. And I had to think long and hard about that. And she noodged. Boy! Was she an expert noodge. The result was The Devil’s Arith­metic. And then the Jew­ish sto­ries began to tum­ble out — between more books about women pirates and kings and princess­es and uni­corns and dinosaurs— in prose, in rhyme, for pic­ture book read­ers and for teens."

What I think is so fascinating is that it took someone on the outside to point it out to Jane - and to ask for it.

Which can be inspiring for each of us.

What do you wish someone pointed out to you that you haven't done yet in your creative work?

What do you wish someone asked you for?

And ask yourself: What's my equivalent of Jane's Jewish dragon story?

And then write and/or illustrate that. After all, it worked for Jane!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Jane Yolen: The Golden Kite Award Interview—YA winner for "Mapping the Bones"

Jane Yolen was awarded the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for her YA novel, Mapping the Bones at the SCBWI 2019 Winter Conference in New York on February 8, 2019.

Jane Yolen

Here, we catch up with Jane about her book and winning this honor...

Lee: Congratulations, Jane! Please tell us about finding out you’d won this Golden Kite Award.

Jane: My snarky answer is by hard work and not writing to get an award. The true answer is the phone rang and it was Lin. I thought she wanted to talk about either a project we were considering doing together or my decision to leave the board or ask for advice about something else going on. We've been friends since SCBW (without the I) began. And she said that MAPPING THE BONES had won and I (and you know me so this was BIG!) was speechless. Then she said "Who would you want to introduce you and say a few words about you and the book?" And I said, "Can I have two people?" She said, Sure." And I said, "(My daughter) Heidi who gave up the two weeks on a small island in Maine to sit out while the others were kayaking to be my beta reader. She had also been moral support in the 4 1/2 years I worked on the book, and you, Lin, because we have been friends for so long."

Lee: It was a lovely moment. Can you pitch us to move Mapping The Bones to the top of our To-Be-Read pile?

Jane: A Holocaust novel hung on the armature of Hansel & Gretel, set first in Lodz ghetto, then in the forest with the partisans, and lastly in a labor camp. And yes, there's a witch character (A Nazi of course) and an oven.

Lee: Wow. Is there an Ah-ha! Moment from the book’s creation you can share?

Jane: I didn't know until about five chapters from the end who the witch character was going to be though given this was a Nazi camp, I had the oven ready. But since the main characters are twins, Chaim and Gittel. and I'd seeded the Mengele twin experiments earlier, it was just a matter of time till I figured it out.

Lee: How long have you been a member of SCBWI, and how has SCBWI helped on your journey?

Jane: I was actually the second member, right after Sue Alexander who told me about the nascent group started by Lin and Steve. Right after me, or at least the next pro to join after me was Sid Fleischman, so we were the first speakers at the first (not conference) dinner I think there may have been 50 people there, including Lin's parents, my dad, Steve's parents. Sue is, alas, dead as is Sid. But Lin and Steve and I keep plugging along. As for what SCBWI has done for me--given me a huge subset of book friends, some I have introduced to the organization. Others took over the region after I invented New England Region of SCBWI, the very first region and I was the very first regional advisor. I ran it for ten years. and the conference for ten years. And I ran the monthly the critique critique group for 25 years. Trust me, the RAs and their crew do a MUCH better job that I ever did! And now things are no longer just centered in the Pioneer Valley where I lived then and live still.

Lee: What advice do you have to share with other children’s book creators?

Jane: BIC: Butt in Chair. HOP: Heart on Page. Don't clutch your pearls or sob over a rejection. Get up and move on. Be a colleague with your editors, agents, art directors, not an adversary. Learn about the field, go to conferences, workshops, meet-and-greets. Read about the field in books, online, subscribe to Publisher's Weekly, The Horn Book, etc. Read widely in the field. Take chances, learn new skills. I learned to write graphic novels in my 60's and verse novels in my 70's. And volunteer for your local region. You will be surprised at how much you will leaern, how many friends you will make (and how many editors and art directors you will become on a first names basis with!)

Lee: Thank you so much, Jane. And again, Congratulations on your win!

Find out more about Jane Yolen at her website here.

SCBWI Announces the 2019 Golden Kite Award Winners

And the winners of the 2019 Golden Kite Awards are...

Middle Grade Fiction: Susan Hood – LIFEBOAT 12 (Simon & Schuster) This compelling novel in verse, based on true events, tells the story of a boy’s harrowing experience on a lifeboat after surviving a torpedo attack during World War II.

Non-Fiction for Younger Readers: Barb Rosenstock – OTIS AND WILL DISCOVER THE DEEP (Little Brown) The suspenseful, little-known true story of two determined pioneers who made the first dive into the deep ocean.

Non-Fiction for Older Readers: Elizabeth Partridge – BOOTS ON THE GROUND: AMERICA’S WAR IN VIETNAM (Viking) A personal, moving foray into the Vietnam War and its impact that goes beyond the historical facts to show how the war irrefutably changed the people who were there.

Picture Book Illustration: Becca Stadtlander – MADE BY HAND: A CRAFTS SAMPLER (Candlewick) A beautiful, one-of-a-kind volume invites readers to marvel at the time, effort, and care that went into creating handmade toys, tools, and treasures of the past.

Picture Book Text: Jessie Oliveros – THE REMEMBER BALLOONS (Simon & Schuster) A tender, sensitive picture book that gently explains the memory loss associated with aging and diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Young Adult Fiction: Jane Yolen – MAPPING THE BONES (Philomel) Influenced by Dr. Mengele’s sadistic experimentations, this story follows twins as they travel from the Lodz ghetto, to the partisans in the forest, to a horrific concentration camp where they lose everything but each other.

The Golden Kite Awards will be presented at a gala during the New York Winter Conference on Friday, February 8 at 7pm at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Guest speaker U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will deliver remarks at the event.

The SCBWI Golden Kite Honor Books are:

Young Reader and Middle Grade Fiction: Dusti Bowling –24 HOURS IN NOWHERE(Sterling Children’s Books) Susan Fletcher – JOURNEY OF THE PALE BEAR (Margaret K. McEldery Books) Jewell Parker Rhodes – GHOST BOYS (Little Brown Books for Young Readers)

Young Adult Fiction: Elizabeth Acevedo – THE POET X (Harper Teen) Vesper Stamper – WHAT THE NIGHT SINGS (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

Non-Fiction for Young Readers: Sandra Neil Wallace – BETWEEN THE LINES: HOW ERNIE BARNES WENT FROM THE FOOTBALL FIELD TO THE ART GALLERY (Paula Wiseman Books) Annette Bay Pimental – GIRL RUNNING: BOBBI GIBB AND THE BOSTON MARATHON (Nancy Paulson Books) Melissa Stewart – PIPSQUEAKS, SLOWPOKES, AND STINKERS (Peachtree)

Non-Fiction for Older Readers: Jarrett J. Krosoczka – HEY, KIDDO: HOW I LOST MY MOTHER, FOUND MY FATHER AND DEALT WITH FAMILY ADDICTION (Graphix/Scholastic) Gail Jarrow – SPOOKED!: HOW A RADIO BROADCAST AND THE WAR OF THE WORLDS SPARKED THE 1938 INVASION OF AMERICA (Calkins Creek)

Picture Book Text: Cori Doerrfeld – THE RABBIT THAT LISTENED (Dial Books for Young Readers) John Himmelman – FLOATY (Henry Holt & Co. Books for Young Readers) Troy Howell – WHALE IN A FISH BOWL (Schwartz & Wade)

Picture Book Illustration: Larry Day – FOUND (Simon & Schuster) Barbara McClintock – NOTHING STOPPED SOPHIE: THE STORY OF UNSHAKABLE MATHEMATICIAN SOPHIE GERMAIN (Little Brown Books for Young Readers)

Congratulations to all the winners and honorees!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

The best response to rejection, courtesy of SCBWI board member, multi-award winner and best-selling author and poet Jane Yolen

Looking for some inspiration? Check out Jane's response to a recent rejection, as documented on her Facebook account:

Jane writes: "OUCH. Not a great start to the New Year: a rejection of five poems for an anthology. Hope it is an outlier and not a predictive model. So I sent out five more to a different journal."

Five poems rejected, five more sent out the SAME DAY.

There's a reason that Jane Yolen is the consummate pro that she is -- and that she's published over 350 books. She takes care of business, and also takes care of her creative self, keeping the fires of hope fed.

Work rejected? Send more work right out again, so there's always a sense of hope moving forward.

This is so wise, to not marinate in the NO, but put out for the MAYBE right away. And in this industry of writing and illustrating for children, that's probably the sanest (and best) way to get to the YESes that are waiting for each of us.

Thanks, Jane!

Illustrate and Write On... and keep submitting!
Lee

Jane Yolen on All The Wonders - Matthew Winner's gift for us

In this All The Wonders podcast, school librarian, writer, and podcast host Matthew Winner and multi-award-winning and multi-best-selling author Jane Yolen have a deep conversation about the power of story, and words, and the magic of writing something that is then read by someone else... and how those words, that story, takes on a whole new meaning.

It's uplifting, and inspiring, and it truly felt like a gift.

Thank you, Jane and Matthew.

You can listen here.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Brilliance from Jane Yolen (courtesy of Julie Hedlund)

"The eye and the ear are different listeners."
- Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen is a legend, the author of over 300 books for children and teens, a member of SCBWI's Board of Advisors, and a brilliant teacher!

Julie Hedlund attended a recent Picture Book Boot Camp Jane offered, and shared on her own blog this great post with some of her take-aways and Jane's advice, including:

If you believe your good reviews, you will have to believe your bad reviews, too. Better to believe in the piece that you are writing.

The post also included this fascinating and very useful video glimpse of the workshop:



Thanks to Jane for the insights and to Julie for sharing!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

A Very Cool Tool

One of the great things about attending one of SCBWI's Winter or Summer Conferences is how much you learn. And this is true no matter where you are on your journey as an illustrator and/or writer.

In a conversation I had this past weekend at #NY14SCBWI with the remarkable Jane Yolen (who has published over 350 books for children and teens!), I brought up how cool it was that the faculty at the Friday plot intensive (including her) were doing the same writing exercises as the attendees.

Jane's response, said with a wise smile?

"Any time an artist stops learning, they're dead."

One very cool tool that was mentioned at #NY14SCBWI by Elizabeth Wein is Google Book's Ngram Viewer.

It lets you explore word and phrase usage in print from 1800 through 2008. You can find out when a word started being used, when it peaked, and even compare its usage as a noun as opposed to its usage as a verb. (Like with the word "Cook.")

The results come back as a chart, and, as in the example above, it would help you figure out that if you're writing a historical piece before 1965, a character likely would refer to "kindergarten" rather than "child care."

There's a lot of different ways to use this tool, and it's worth checking out Advanced Usage.

Thanks Elizabeth! And like Jane said, let's all keep learning!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

The REAL Scoop on the Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Grant

In which Jane explains...

Hello all my fellow MidListers:

You know--there are the authors of Twilight and Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there's Eric Carle and Maurice Sendak and Tomie dePaola, and on the fingers of both hands and maybe your toes, you could add a few more super stars to that number.

And the rest of us are midlist.

Some of us are happy there. We sell books on a regular basis. We win some minor awards. OK, maybe a major award once or twice. We have kids and adults who tell us we have changed their lives. We teach children to read, to fall in love with the night sky, the small natures, the lives of princes and princesses. We let children in on the wonderful diverse world we live in. We let them watch a story unfold. We tickle their ears with puns and poems and jokes and tales. We nurture their hearts when their hearts have been banged up a bit or even broken. We are their surrogate moms and dads and grandmoms and granddads. We are their literary families, their book friends. (Or as one child wrote to me, "Your book fiend," though I knew what he meant to say!)

We write to be read, and sometimes we write to have written, and occasionally we write to be paid. Though not enough. Never enough, we midlisters.

And sometimes, as popular as we once were, we suddenly are last year's flavor last year's news.

It has happened to me over a long career. There have been months, years where nothing has gone right. Where the books I labored over and loved the most didn't sell. Yes, truly. I have about thirty unsold picture books and book proposals in my files and every year I add to that list. I have told my children that after I'm gone, for the next thirty or so years, they can say to the editors, "We have just found mother's LAST book!" And maybe they can sell it for a bit of change. Or a fortune. I hope so. It's their inheritance after all.

So when I had a bestseller--a really and truly long lasting (for as long as these things last) bestselling series, I said to all those dinosaurs, "You are going to help some of those wonderful midlist authors who's careers have stalled or fallen off the cliff or dropped dead at their feet. You are going to let them know that they are not forgotten, their books are still read, still loved. And the dinosaurs stomped their terrible feet and rolled their gigantic eyes and gnashed their terrible teeth (where where did you think Sendak got all his ideas from!) and thundered, "How can we help?"

Which is how--with a lot of organizational know-how from SCBWI--the Jane Yolen Midlist Grant was born.

Oh--and of course I have taken a few liberties here and there with this account. I am a fiction writer after all. But you knew that already.

Jane Yolen

PS You can ask your own dinosaurs and piglets and waltzing penguins and magical pots and dancing elephants how they can help, too. Just send a $1 or $5 or more to the Jane Yolen Midlist author grant at SCBWI headquarters and it will be added to the bankroll.

The grant gives $3000 to midlist authors to honor their contribution and help raise awareness about their current works in progress. A winner will receive $2000 and two honor recipients will each receive $500. Jane hopes the grant will help boost the careers of Mid-list authors who have, for whatever reason, not recently sold a book in several years. 

The Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Grant winners for 2013 will be announced at #NY13SCBWI, on Sunday morning of the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York City, February 1-3, 2013.

For details on how to be considered for 2014 and how to nominate a worthy mid-list author go here.

Thanks, Jane!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

SCBWI TEAM BLOG Pre-conference Interview: Jane Yolen

Martha Brockenbrough offers the first in our series of SCBWI TEAM BLOG pre-conference faculty interviews starting us out with the terrific Jane Yolen!

Here's a bit from Martha's interview with Jane (in which, Martha says, "she debuts the new BIC.")

Without the mighty badge of the SCBWI national blog team to hide behind, I'd never have the guts to approach Jane Yolen for an interview.

She's Jane Yolen! Author of more than 300 books! A Caldecott Medalist and Golden Kite winner! Likened unto Hans Christian Anderson! Also, as far as I can tell, she is bionic. There is otherwise no way to explain how she writes so many fabulous books.

You might already know these things about Jane, though.

But did you know that she coined the acronym B.I.C. for "butt in chair"? Did you further know she was the second author ever to join the SCBWI? And that she was the organization's first regional adviser? She founded and for a decade ran the New England region.

Click here to read the full interview with Jane Yolen.

Click here to register for the Annual Winter Conference and see Jane--and a number of other equally wonderful faculty--in person.