Jane Yolen, children’s book author whose ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ became a Holocaust classic, dies at 87

Jane Yolen was already an award-winning creator and illustrator of greater than 100 titles for younger readers when her editor urged she write a Jewish kids’s e-book.

At first, she resisted the thought. Positive, she was Jewish. However she didn’t develop up in a religiously observant household, and he or she insisted she didn’t know sufficient about Judaism to tackle the challenge.

Lastly, she relented. Drawing on a spark of an thought a few Holocaust time-travel fantasy, Yolen turned within the first draft of what would turn out to be “The Satan’s Arithmetic,” her 1988 younger grownup novel. “I assumed, ‘OK, I’m going to do this,’” Yolen recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Company years later.

The e-book received instant acclaim and garnered a number of awards. In the present day, it’s seen as a basic of the style — and one that is still caught up in banned-book lists.

For Yolen, who died Thursday at 87 in her house in Western Massachusetts, “The Satan’s Arithmetic” turned her signature title. Nonetheless in print, the e-book was additionally made into an Emmy Award-winning Showtime function starring Kirsten Dunst. It was the cornerstone of a titanic legacy in kids’s literature, her household stated in an announcement.

“It’s with profound unhappiness that I, together with my brothers, Adam Stemple, and Jason Stemple, share the information of our mom, Jane Yolen’s passing,” her daughter Heidi Stemple wrote on Fb, including that Yolen had “handed gently with no ache or stress” and her household by her facet, studying certainly one of her books to her.

Yolen was born on Feb. 11, 1939, in New York Metropolis. Her father was a journalist and her mom was a psychiatric social employee till Yolen was born.

An alumna of Smith School, the place she received poetry and journalism awards, she labored first as an editor in New York Metropolis, writing at her breaks and day off. Her first printed e-book, “Pirates in Petticoats,” a nonfiction work about girls on the excessive seas, was printed when she was 22.

She quickly pivoted to kids’s literature, changing into one of the vital prolific authors within the style. She went on to publish 450 kids’s books, together with extra Jewish titles, and was often called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America.” She received the distinguished Caldecott Medal for her 1987 image e-book, “Owl Moon,” and her “How Do Dinosaurs …” sequence is a staple in lots of preschool school rooms. (It contains one Jewish title: “How Do Dinosaurs Say Completely satisfied Chanukah?” Her 450th title was printed simply this 12 months, her kids stated.

But it surely was “The Satan’s Arithmetic,” students have stated, that cemented her legacy as a number one creator for younger Jews. The novel was a trailblazer for its mixing of time-travel with historic veracity, in response to the late Norman H. Finkelstein, a Nationwide Jewish Guide award winner who was a kids’s librarian himself.

“It was a unique Holocaust e-book,” Finkelstein informed JTA in 2018, on the event of the title’s thirtieth anniversary. “It was not strictly factual, it was not a memoir. Jane did an outstanding job in taking the story of the Holocaust right down to a stage that strange American youngsters might perceive. The characters have been reasonable, not paper cutouts.”

Different titles of hers included “Meet Me on the Effectively: The Women and Girls of the Bible,” with Barbara Diamond Goldin, and “Jewish Fairy Story Feasts,” along with her daughter Heidi, who developed and illustrated the hands-on recipes.

Yolen relished the collaborations along with her daughter. They lived subsequent door to one another, together with Stemple’s household, with two grandchildren who have been taste-testers of Stemple’s recipes.

“Jane was a treasure, and it’s troublesome to think about the world of books — certainly the world itself – with out her,” Richard Michelson, an award-winning creator of Jewish kids’s books and Yolen’s buddy and neighbor, wrote on Fb. Describing her as a cherished mentor of youthful writers, he added, “Jane created classics as if it have been as straightforward as respiratory.”

Whereas typically assigned in faculties as a part of classes on the Holocaust, Yolen’s titles aren’t with out controversy. In 2025 a Texas college district, utilizing synthetic intelligence, flagged “The Satan’s Arithmetic” for elimination as a title containing “DEI,” or range, fairness and inclusion content material. The e-book turned certainly one of a number of well-known Holocaust titles to be pulled from faculties in the previous couple of years.

Although she had initially resisted the thought of being a Holocaust creator, Yolen would go on to publish a trilogy of unconventional young-adult novels in regards to the topic. She included parts of “Sleeping Magnificence” into 1992’s “Briar Rose.” “Mapping the Bones” adopted in 2018 as a riff on “Hansel and Gretel.”

“Every time we consider the Holocaust, we consider remembering,” Yolen informed JTA in that very same 2018 interview. “We consider by no means forgetting. Quickly all we could have are the tales.”

Along with her kids, Yolen is survived by six grandchildren. Her husband, David Stemple, to whom she was married for 44 years, died in 2006.