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9de0817
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Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.
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literature
disease
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Jane Yolen |
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1249186
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Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends... on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.
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perspective
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Jane Yolen |
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a51a043
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Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.
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young-adult
fiction
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Jane Yolen |
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73c7653
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A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.
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present
marjorie-bruce
robert-the-bruce
worn
cage
historical-fiction
old
girl
young-adult-fiction
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Jane Yolen |
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9d3d092
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Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.
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Jane Yolen |
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30fcfd0
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A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?
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Jane Yolen |
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a4520ed
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You can only chase a butterfly for so long.
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young-adult
culloden
jane-yolen
stuart
butterfly
scottish
historical-fiction
chase
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Jane Yolen |
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7c770ae
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Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths."
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Jane Yolen |
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361d302
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And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words a..
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Jane Yolen |
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ace9a48
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You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya--life--to me.
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Jane Yolen |
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3a2660c
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The thing I want to know is, if you tell your brain not to do stuff... and it keeps doing it anyway, does that mean your mind has a mind of its own? And if it does, then who's in charge here, anyway?
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Jane Yolen & Bruce Coville |
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0507176
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Touch magic. Pass it on.
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magic
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Jane Yolen |
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04d00d4
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We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.
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Jane Yolen |
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6fe4e45
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1. Write every day 2. Write what interests you. 3. Write for the child inside of you. (Or the adult, if you are writing adult books.) 4. Write with honest emotion 5. Be careful of being facile 6. Be wary of preaching 7. Be prepared for serendipity
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Jane Yolen |
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426892f
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The tales of Elfland do not stand or fall on their actuality but on their truthfulness, their speaking to the human condition, the longings we all have for the Faerie Other.
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fantasy
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Jane Yolen |
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25b8d7e
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A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it - the good people and the not so good, the young people and the not-so-young, and even Briar Rose's mother and father fell asleep. Everyone slept: lords and ladies, teacher and tummlers, dogs and doves, rabbits and rabbitzen and all kinds of citizens. So fast asleep they were, they were not able to wake up for a hundred years.
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sleeping-beauty
holocaust
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Jane Yolen |
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165fd96
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How often is the passing of one storm only a prelude to another.
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Jane Yolen |
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1a90da4
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Aren't hidden doors the most alluring? The old stories point that out surely. Even the greatest heroes and heroines fall under the spell of a locked door.
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Jane Yolen |
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08a1efd
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It is winter now, and the roses are blooming again, their petals bright against the snow. My father died last April; my sisters no longer write, except at the turning of the year, content with their fine houses and their grandchildren. Beast and I putter in the gardens and walk slowly on the forest paths.
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fairy-tales
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Jane Yolen |
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99516ff
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What is a vow... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?
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Jane Yolen |
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c5ff74d
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Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.
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Jane Yolen |
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09ca4da
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You've got some power," Jakkin said. "One hug--and the lights go out!"
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humor
lights
power
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Jane Yolen |
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cec7e0a
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You know how it is: as soon as you decide to forget something, your brain comes to the conclusion that it's the most fascinating thing in the world.
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Jane Yolen |
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0a93970
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A shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole.
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Jane Yolen |
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74687c8
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Cinderella, until lately, has never been a passive dreamer waiting for rescue. The forerunners of the Ash-girl have all been hardy, active heroines who take their lives into their own hands and work out their own salvations .... Cinderella speaks to all of us in whatever skin we inhabit: the child mistreated, a princess or highborn lady in disguise bearing her trials with patience, fortitude, and determination. Cinderella makes intelligent ..
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Jane Yolen |
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e283478
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But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. I cannot remember, she whispered to herself. I cannot remember. She's been shorn of memory as brutally as she'd been shorn of her hair, without permission, without reason... Gone, all gone, she thought again wildly, no longer even sure what was gone, what she was mour..
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Jane Yolen |
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40a98b3
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What makes a good book?
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Jane Yolen |
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f4fc9e5
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We are all monsters" Hannah said. "Because we are letting it happen." She said it not as if she believed it but as she were to repeat something she had heard before."
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Jane Yolen |
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1df0fdf
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Wanting to die and dying, she found were two separate things.
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Jane Yolen |
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22f1301
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He unpacks his bag of tales with fingers quick as a weaver's picking the weft threads threading the warp. Watch his fingers. Watch his lips speaking the old familiar words: All those threads pulling us back to another world, another time, when goosegirls married well and frogs could rhyme, when maids spoke syllables of pearl and stepmothers came to grief. .... (from poem)
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Jane Yolen |
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ac04259
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Passover isn't about eating, Hannah," her mother began at last, sighing and pushing her fingers through her silver-streaked hair. "You could have fooled me," Hannah muttered."
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Jane Yolen |
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c8e4de5
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Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love... But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but to raise. She may not be what you will have her to be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that 'Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.
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family
daughter
parenting
parenthood
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Jane Yolen |
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d22d4d7
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For it began to occur to him that one way to become private was to respect another's privacy.
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Jane Yolen |
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29af758
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Happy-ever-after is a fairy-tale notion, not history. I know of no woman who escaped from Chelmno alive.
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Jane Yolen |
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8694a93
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A mist still lay all about the walls and floors, hovering like a last breath on the lips of all the sleepers. As he walked through the castle, he marveled at how many lay asleep: the good people, the not-so-good, the young people and the not-so-young, and not one of them stirring. Not one.
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Jane Yolen |
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9ddf878
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The thing about endings is, they can begin quietly enough. That's how they sneak up on you.
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Jane Yolen |
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8984839
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Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself. There will be times when he will surround you with walls of darkness. But remember always that your soul is secure to you, for your soul is entire, and that he cannot enter your soul, for your soul is part of God.
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god
soul
evil
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Jane Yolen |
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4d37984
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In fantasy stories we learn to understand the differences of others, we learn compassion for those things we cannot fathom, we learn the importance of keeping our sense of wonder. The strange worlds that exist in the pages of fantastic literature teach us a tolerance of other people and places and engender an openness toward new experience. Fantasy puts the world into perspective in a way that 'realistic' literature rarely does. It is not s..
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Jane Yolen |
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58e27d7
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I must fill myself with sorrow if I am to give you what you want.
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Jane Yolen |
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4ee8cdd
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All around the castle, a briary hedge began to grow, with thorns as sharp as barbs.
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Jane Yolen |
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7080f55
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Once upon a time," Gemma began, the older two girls whispering the opening with her, "which is all times and no times but not the very best of times,there was a castle. And in it lived a king who wanted nothing more in the world than a child."
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Jane Yolen |
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89d9980
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Ah--now you think I have been lying to you, that this is only a story. It has a king in it. And while a story with Death might be true, a story with a king in it is always a fairy tale. But remember, this comes from a time when kings were as common as corn. Plant a field and you got corn. Plant a kingdom and you got a king. It is that simple.
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fairy-tales
stories
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Jane Yolen |
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a86b176
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But wanting and getting are hard neighbors and bitter friends.
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Jane Yolen |
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c8be767
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As I thought about endings and - being a lover of fairy tales - I knew immediately that the deeply rooted last line in folk stories, 'And they lived happily ever after', is the core of what we think we know about endings. We hear it always in our hindbrain because it's the last line most of us in the West have grown up with. That line stops the story at the point of greatest happiness. The wedding, the homecoming, the mystery unraveled, the..
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Jane Yolen |