My mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double crosstics.Īmanda: How did your father help you publish the magazine stories? He was president of the Overseas Press Club for several years. Jane Yolen: My father was a journalist, then a public relations consultant. My father displayed my books but as they were for children, refused to read them!Īmanda: What kinds of writing did your parents do? (Though he said of my poetry,"That's nice dear, but you can't make a living from writing poems.") My mother used to read my children's book manuscripts and press copies of my books on her friends.
But they were also very proud of the writing I did.When my brother, 3 1/2 years younger, and I wanted to do a newspaper with articles about the people in our apartment building, my mother typed out all the copies.Īfter I graduated from college, my father helped me get magazine stories published. Jane Yolen: My parents were writers and readers, so they modeled very effectively. And it was so.Īmanda: How did your parents influence your writing? Did they actively encourage you in any one direction, or was writing just there in the background?
So I knew that whatever else I did (and I did journalism, book editing, college teaching) I would write. My parents were writers as were most of their friends.
That left singing (I was good, just not good enough) and writing. Jane Yolen: Well, I was too short for either ballet or basketball in anything other than a school setting, not particularly good at languages (though I took Latin and Spanish) and debate had little real world application unless I decided to become a politician. What made you decide to focus on writing? She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century, and her books have won numerous awards.Īmanda Divine: You seem to have been successful at everything in your childhood-writing, singing, debate, basketball, languages. Jane Yolen is an author of hundreds of children's books, fantasy, and science fiction, including The Devil's Arithmetic, Briar Moon, Animal Fare, Sleeping Ugly, and Wizard's Hall.Īs well as being a prolific writer, Jane Yolen has also worked as a teacher, speaker, and a reviewer of children's literature. Children's Books, Past, Present, and Future
0 kommentar(er)
