QUEEN'S OWN FOOL
Jane Yolen, Robert J. Harris, . . Puffin, $7.99 (390pp) ISBN 978-0-698-11918-5
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Reviewed on: 11/12/2001
Genre: Children's
Hardcover - 390 pages - 978-0-399-23380-7
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- Take Two! A Celebration of TwinsJane Yolen, J. Patrick LewisThis playful collection of twin-themed poems, a welcome addition to the bookshelf on the subject of twins, is as much for parents as for kids. Early poems focus on the time before birth: “Wrestling Continue reading »
- Bug Off! Creepy, Crawly PoemsJane YolenThe team behind A Mirror to Nature and Wild Wings offers another striking pairing of poems and photographs about the natural world, in this case the mysterious lives of insects. Each poem (and Continue reading »
- Last LaughsJane Yolen, J. Patrick LewisLewis and Yolen team up for a darkly funny homage to the dearly departed—those with feathers, hooves, tails, and fins. An axe leans against a blood-stained stump while three feathers drift nearby Continue reading »
- Waking DragonsJane YolenDragons are just not morning people. They “bumble” and “tumble” out of bed, and the doughty little knight who is their master risks life and limb just getting them to “Put their jammies in the Continue reading »
- How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas?Jane YolenContinuing to follow the successful blueprint of the long-running How Do Dinosaurs books, Yolen and Teague pose the possibility of dinosaurs wreaking merry havoc on Christmas Eve. Uproarious Continue reading »
- How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah?Jane YolenYolen and Teague score a winner with this playful Chanukah story brought to life with bright and engaging illustrations. Each page poses a question of how a dinosaur would behave during the eight Continue reading »
- Curse of the Thirteenth Fey: The True Tale of Sleeping BeautyJane YolenYolen follows her Snow White retelling, Snow in Summer (2011), with a similarly inventive spin on Sleeping Beauty (like that book, this novel also derives from one of the author’s short stories). Continue reading »
- Curses! Foiled AgainJane YolenYolen’s smart, introspective, foil-wielding Aliera Carstairs returns, this time to thwart the Dark Lord’s plot to kidnap her beloved cousin. The Dark Lord wants the Defender’s weapon—that’s Aliera’s Continue reading »
- The Emily Sonnets: The Life of Emily DickinsonJane YolenThese 16 sonnets grew out of Yolen's lifelong love for Dickinson, who is a neighbor of sorts%E2%80%94her ancestral home is near Yolen's. Written in the voices of Dickinson, her sister, and others, Continue reading »
- Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tale Voices with a TwistJane Yolen, Rebecca Kai DotlichYolen and Dotlich refashion 15 classic fairy tales into incisive poems told from dual perspectives. Cinderella laments wearing glass shoes when other choices were more sensible (“I could have put on/ Continue reading »
- Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, and Other Female VillainsJane YolenMother-daughter collaborators Yolen and Stemple, who previously partnered with Guay on The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories, revisit the lives and legendary misdeeds of 26 notorious women in this Continue reading »
- Wee Rhymes: Baby’s First Poetry BookJane Yolen“We both believe that literature begins in the cradle,” write Yolen and Dyer at the beginning of this collection of 75 brief but vivid poems. Most are originals from Yolen (10 poems are credited to Continue reading »
- The Hostage PrinceJane Yolen, Adam StempleYolen and Stemple%E2%80%94the mother-son team behind Troll Bridge, Pay the Piper, and B.U.G.%E2%80%94deliver a fast-paced adventure, first in a trilogy, which draws on fairy myth and lore. Aspen is a Continue reading »
- How Do Dinosaurs Say I’m Mad?Jane YolenYes, even dinosaurs have bad days, and a few of them are at their worst in this addition to Yolen and Teague’s popular series. It’s always a delight to watch Teague’s dinosaurs misbehave, and that’s Continue reading »
- Once Upon a Time: New Fairy TalesJane Yolen (et al.)Despite the subtitle, Guran (The Mammoth Book of Angels and Demons) has actually filled this anthology with adaptations of familiar tales. The stories include urban fantasy (“Warrior Dreams” by Cinda Continue reading »
- The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 2Jane Yolen (et al.)The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction—aka F&SF—has been one of the flagships of speculative fiction since its founding in 1949. While similarly lauded magazines, like Continue reading »
- Animal Stories: Heartwarming True Tales from the Animal KingdomJane YolenYolen and her children present 19 true stories about unusual animals. While anchored in reality, the vibrant storytelling and Ishida’s bold, posterlike acrylics occasionally invoke the feeling of Continue reading »
- A Plague of UnicornsJane YolenYolen (Owl Moon) weaves a magical yet believable tale of myth and magic in this charming middle-grade fantasy. In the mythical kingdom of Callanshire, James, son of the Duke of Callander, is sent Continue reading »
- Stone AngelJane YolenAn unnamed Jewish girl living in Paris fervently believes in angels—she need only look at the Gothic buildings around her to know they exist. Those angels seem “farther and farther away” after the Continue reading »
- How Do Dinosaurs Stay Safe?Jane YolenThroughout the How Do Dinosaurs series, prehistoric carnivores and herbivores have showed off some less-than-perfect behavior in modern settings. Now Yolen and Teague take the idea a bit farther: Continue reading »
- You Nest Here with MeJane Yolen, Heidi StempleFrequent mother-daughter collaborators Yolen and Stemple, whose previous books include Not All Princesses Dress in Pink, offer a gentle rhyming bedtime story that spotlights 14 birds’ Continue reading »
- Trash MountainJane YolenWhen an inquisitive red squirrel named Nutley summons the nerve to offer the "Paw of Friendship" to a group of nearby gray squirrels, they respond by tossing him off a cliff. Fearing for his life Continue reading »
- Sing a Season SongJane Yolen, Lisa Jane AshlockIn succinct, evocative poems, Yolen describes the seasons as they unfold in a forest habitat. In one winter scene, children play in the distance while foxes frolic in the foreground, and an owl and Continue reading »
- The Stranded WhaleJane YolenIt is 1971, and a girl named Sally and her brothers are walking home across the sand dunes of their Maine town when she sees "this big gray thing, humped on the drying sand." It's a beached gray Continue reading »
- Warrior WomenJane Yolen (et al.)Two dozen stories of women warriors form this epic anthology of stories about those forced to fight, those who chose to fight regardless of odds, those who ran from their destiny as warriors, and Continue reading »
- Mythic Delirium, Vol. 2Jane Yolen, C S Maccath, Swapna KishoreThe brilliant and the bland run side-by-side in the Allens' second collection of strange tales. Vivid prose and creepy concepts appear in Jessy Randall's "Maybe a Witch Lives There," in which two Continue reading »
- On Bird HillJane YolenFirst in a planned series (a portion of proceeds will benefit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), this dreamy story follows a child and his dog on a stroll by the sea. Writing in characteristically Continue reading »
- Little Frog and the Scary Autumn ThingJane YolenVivid autumn foliage is generally considered to be a thing of beauty, but those unfamiliar colors spell danger to a young frog. “To Little Frog, red and gold were scary,” writes Yolen (On Bird Continue reading »
- How Do Dinosaurs Go to Sleep?Jane YolenYolen and Teague return to a subject they covered in their 2000 picture book, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, as an unusual group of dinosaurs—concavenator, majungasaurus, and sauropelta, Continue reading »
- Stone ColdJane Yolen, Adam StempleCraig McGowan has little to believe in as a street urchin in 1930s Edinburgh, but just when he’s ready to give up and throw himself from the top of a church, he meets Silex, a demon trapped in a Continue reading »
- The Emerald CircusJane YolenThis slight collection contains several very strong stories but is weakened by its overarching theme: all of the pieces are riffs on famous fairy tales, or on the lives of writers or famous Continue reading »
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PW spoke with Yolen about writing her 365th book, 'Mapping the Bones,' a retelling of “Hansel and Gretel” set during the Continue reading »![]()
In Harris’s 'A Study in Crimson: Sherlock Holmes 1942' (Pegasus Crime, June.), the sleuth hunts a vicious killer in WWII London. Continue reading »
PW EDITORS’ PICKS FOR
THE BEST NEW BOOKS
PW EDITORS’ PICKS FOR THE BEST NEW BOOKS
Featured Children's Reviews
The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest
Aubrey Hartman
Clare, the undead fox of Deadwood Forest, is cast as a monster by the local children who gather each Halloween around the forest’s edge to chant about how he “waits to feast/ On Continue reading »
Knucklehead
Tony Keith Jr
Poet and educator Keith (How the Boogeyman Became a Poet) delivers a poignant, hip-hop-fueled collection of poetry that’s equal parts memoir, love letter, and rallying cry to Continue reading »
Little Sanctuary
Randy Boyagoda
Sixteen-year-old Sabel is puzzled by tonight’s family meal, which seems to be a special spread of her and her four siblings’ favorite foods. Sickness and savagery have toppled Continue reading »
When I Hear Spirituals
Cheryl Willis Hudson
Willis Hudson movingly exalts the power of African American spirituals in a lyrics showcase that pairs existing verses with feelings they can evoke. On the first page, a Black Continue reading »
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