Fairy Tales: Youthful Yarns by Yolen and Yep

The fairy tale section at Portland Public Library provides both Yolen and Yep.

 

Both authors produced works in multiple genres, from adventure to contemporary to historical to fairy tales. Both authors produced works with a thankful lack of apology. I've mentioned elsewhere that I now avoid any books for which the primary selling point is NOT story but rather the message or  audience: "This wondrous tome which explores [jargon, indicating contemporary righteousness] aimed at this particular group of well-deserving people" signals fiction that is as yearningly preachy as any piece of Victorian literature. 

 

The extraordinary point with Yep and Yolen is that when they produced such a variety of work, they acted on an ideal rather than pronouncing it. They were diverse without constantly calling attention to the fact. Yolen produced YA and children's novels as well as non-fiction, including a picture book about the mystery of the Mary Celeste. She also retold myths and fairy tales, including "Burd Jane" or Tam Lin.

 

Unfortunately, the open letters to Yolen's two collections--Not One Damsel in Distress and Mightier Than the Sword--partly undo Yolen's good work (so skip the letters). They imply that women cannot relate to brawny heroes and that boys prefer tales that don't end "like so many Star Trek episodes--with a battle or a brawl," which is such a patently unbelievable statement, one wonders who actually reads the anthology. But I blame the publishers, not Yolen.

 

One of the positives about many of Yolen's works is that like Alvin Schwartz of Scary Stories, she adds notes about the folktales' origins. I love these additional notes! From Yolen, I learned, for instance, that Ash Lad is a Norweigian Jack. And Yolen knows her culture, so in her notes on "Burd Jane," she references her own retelling (Tam Lin), Robin McKinley's short story, and The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope.

 

For Yep, I read Dragon of the Lost Sea, which finds its roots in Chinese folktales. I was engaged by the central relationship between Shimmer, the dragon with attitude, and Thorn, the human boy with attitude. I immediately put the next book in the series on hold.

 

I also read two of Yep's picture books from the fairy tales section, The Boy Who Swallowed Snakes and The Khan's Daughter. The most telling characteristic of both books is how funny they are. Little Chou, the boy who swallows snakes, has to eat them to prevent their evil from spreading He is told, after he eats the first one, that he will die. 

"How much longer do I have to wait?" he complains. 

His mother later scolds him:
 

"Evil or not you might as well eat [the snakes] like a civilized person." 

 

In the second book, the Khan's daughter decides that she rather likes the commoner who cheerfully takes on the tests set up by her mother. She gives him the final challenge. When he concedes to her, she just as cheerfully accepts him, but they won't tell anyone exactly what happened.

 

"Not even your mother?" Mongke asked.

 

"Especially my mother," Borte said.