It’s the birthday of Jane Yolen (b. 1939), best known for her picture book Owl Moon (1987), which won illustrator John Schoenherr the Caldecott Medal in 1988. Yolen has written over 300 books for both children and adults, which is, you know, more than everybody else combined.

Yolen was born in New York City. Her father was a journalist and her mother was a psychiatric social worker until Yolen was born, then became a stay-at-home mom who wrote and sold crossword puzzles. When Yolen was still young, her father joined the army and spent WWII in England as head of the secret radio in London. According to Yolen, he was wounded, returned home, and “told me that he’d won the war single-handedly, and I believed him” (http://janeyolen.com/biography/).

Yolen’s educational history is one of being a “gold star girl,” getting into excellent schools, and discovering she was just one of many gold star girls and had to work hard to keep up. She studied at PS 93, then Hunter Junior High School, and was about to enter Music and Art High School when her family moved to Westport, Connecticut. Yolen studied at Smith College, where she won poetry and journalism awards, and that’s what she considered herself when she moved back to New York City as an editor: a poet and a journalist. But on her 22nd birthday, she sold her first children’s book, Pirates in Petticoats (1963).

Yolan has written a YA novel about the Holocaust, The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988), which won the National Jewish Book Award and is a combination of historical fiction and sf; an adult fantasy novel about the Holocaust, Briar Rose (1992), which won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature; and tons of books in between that have nothing to do with the Holocaust but still won lots of awards. If you’re like our family, you know Yolen best from her charming picture books series, How Do Dinosaurs…?, featuring dinosaur children and their beleaguered human parents trying valiantly to civilize them. My personal favorite: How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? (2000), which begins, “How does a dinosaur say good night when Papa comes in to turn off the light? Does a dinosaur slam his tail and pout? Does he throw his teddy bear all about?” The books are brilliant because (as with all brilliant children’s books) there is plenty for the adults as well, and I always found it immensely comforting to get to the end of the book where “They give a big kiss, they turn out the light, tuck in their tails, and whisper ‘good night.’” (If anyone cares: I still have not caught up on sleep from those years.)

Yolen was married to David W. Stemple for 44 years before his death in 2006; they have three children and six grandchildren, many pictures of which adorn Yolen’s web site.

Have a second cup of coffee this cold, gray Monday morning and stay scrupulously honest to the data.