Jane Yolen, the prolific children’s author whose Holocaust novel The Devil’s Arithmetic became a classroom staple, died Thursday at 87 in her home in Western Massachusetts.
Her daughter, Heidi Stemple, said on Facebook that Yolen had “passed gently with no pain or stress” and that the family was by her side. Stemple said the news was being shared with her brothers, Adam Stemple and Jason Stemple. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Yolen was born Feb. 11, 1939, in New York City and had already built a long career as an award-winning author and illustrator of more than 100 books for young readers before she wrote the title that would define much of her later reputation. She won the Caldecott Medal for Owl Moon in 1987, a year before The Devil’s Arithmetic was published.
That book grew out of an editor’s suggestion that she try writing a Jewish children’s book. Yolen initially pushed back, saying she had not grown up in a religiously observant family and did not know enough about Judaism. She later turned in the first draft after drawing on an idea about a Holocaust time-travel fantasy, then said, “I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to try this,’” according to the account of her work.
The result was immediate. The Devil’s Arithmetic won acclaim, collected multiple awards and never went away; it remains in print and was adapted into an Emmy Award-winning Showtime feature starring Kirsten Dunst. It also appeared on banned-book lists, a reminder that Yolen’s work reached readers as both literature and argument.
She went on to publish 450 children’s books, with her 450th title released this year. Her output ranged from the How Do Dinosaurs... series, a fixture in many preschool classrooms, to Jewish-themed titles including How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah?, Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible and Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts.
Yolen’s death closes the life of an author who moved from a long, varied career into a single book that became a lasting touchstone for young readers learning about the Holocaust. What remains unanswered is simple: there has been no public explanation for what caused her death.
