Jane Yolen, who has died aged 87, devoted her professional life to children’s books, not only as an award-winning author but also as an editor, journalist and university teacher. With an exceptional number of books to her name – Terror Birds, her 450th title, is due to be published in July – she was most highly praised for her inventive retellings of fairytales, in which she included both gentle and tough magic, some of which had serious and painful consequences.
Yolen described herself as “a writer of literary or art fairytales, stories that that use the elements of old stories – the cadences, the magical settings or objects – but concern themselves with modern themes”. Critics have described them as being in the best traditions of the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen while Yolen, who enjoyed folk singing, said “I hope my tales sound as if they could be sung”.
