A Mirror to Nature

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A Sip of Aesop

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All in the Woodland Early: An ABC Book

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All Star!

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All Those Secrets of the World

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Alphabestiary

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An Egret’s Day

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An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball

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And Twelve Chinese Acrobats

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Animal Fare

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Animal Train

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Baby Bear’s Bedtime Book

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Baby Bear’s Big Dreams

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Baby Bear’s Books

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Baby Bear’s Chairs

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Ballad of the Pirate Queens, The

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Bedtime for Bunny

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Before the Storm

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Beneath the Ghost Moon

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Bird of Time, The

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Boy Who Had Wings, The

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Child of Faerie/Child of Earth

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Color Me a Rhyme

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Come to the Fairies’ Ball

 

Count Me a Rhyme

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Dimity Duck

 

Dinosaur Dances

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Dove Isabeau

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Eeny Meeny Miney Mole

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Elfabet

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Elsie’s Bird

 

I was in the doctor’s office years ago, waiting for him to come into the room, and reading the Smithsonian Magazine. In it was a story about East Coast women who moved west to live to the Nebraska territory. Often these women went crazy because there were no identifiable sounds there. It was too big a place, too wind-through-prairie-grasses where they were more used to the tidy cities or the comfortable farms of the East. Some walked out into the tall grass until they were totally lost and died. But the ones who’d brought along canaries seemed to survive at a higher rate.

And of course, I thought: there’s a picture book here.

When I wrote it—and actually when I sold it to one of the many editors who originally turned the book down—it was the story of a young Boston woman who falls in love and goes west with her new husband. She brings along the bird, sticks close to home (the sod house) until one day the bird escapes the cage and flies out the window, and she has to go retrieve it.

The editor (the marvelous Patricia Gauch) sat for some time on the mss. and then said that it needed a child at the center. Make it the farmer’s little girl. And I said an immediate no. Then thought a minute and added, "Wait, let me try it." And no sooner had I gotten a very rough bit down than I knew Patti had been absolutely right. She also got one of her award-winning illustrators, David Small—an artist who I admired greatly and enjoyed personally—to do the illlustration. He also lies in that area and his wife has made a spectacular "prairie garden."

Now I subscribe to Smithsonian but have never gotten another picture book idea out of it. Yet.

What reviewer’s have said:

  • “City kids will marvel as I once did at the notion of losing yourself in a vegetation usually cropped and pruned into respectable lawns. Country kids will find a soulmate in a girl so in love with a bird that she casts herself in harm’s way to aid him. And parents will be equally entranced by Yolen’s wordplay and Small’s inventiveness. Quiet. Contained. Original. A keeper.”—School Library Journal

 

Emperor and the Kite, The

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Encounter

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Fine Feathered Friends

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Firebird, The

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Flying Witch, The

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Girl in the Golden Bower, The

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Girl Who Loved the Wind, The

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Good Griselle

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Good Night, Little Bunny

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Grandad Bill’s Song

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Grandma’s Hurrying Child

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Greyling

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Gwinellen: The Princess Who Could Not Sleep

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Hands

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Hannah Dreaming

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Harvest Home

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Here’s a Little Poem

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Hip Hippos

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Honkers

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Hoptoad

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Horizons

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How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?

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How Do Dinosaurs Count to Ten?

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How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?

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How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?

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How Do Dinosaurs Go to School

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How Do Dinosaurs Learn Their Colors?

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How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats

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How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs

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How Do Dinosaurs Play with Their Friends?

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How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?

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How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You?

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Isabel’s Noel

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It All Depends

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Johnny Appleseed

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King Long Shanks

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Least Things

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Letting Swift River Go

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Little Mouse and Elephant

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Little Spotted Fish, The

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Longest Name on the Block, The

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Lost Boy

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Mama’s Kiss

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Meet the Monsters

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Merlin and the Dragons (book)

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Milkweed Days

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Minstrel & the Mountain

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Miz Berlin Walks

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Moonball

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Mouse’s Birthday

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Musicians of Bremen, The

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My Brother’s Flying Machine

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My Father Knows the Names of Things

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My Uncle Emily

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Naming Liberty

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No Bath Tonight

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Nocturne

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Not All Princesses Dress in Pink

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Off We Go!

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Old Dame Counterpane

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One Hippo Hops

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Owl Moon

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Pegasus, the Flying Horse

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Picnic with Piggins

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Piggins

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Piggins and the Royal Wedding

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Prince of Egypt

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Pumpkin Baby

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Rainbow Rider

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Raining Cats and Dogs

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Raising Yoder’s Barn

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Sad, Mad, Glad Hippos

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Scarecrow’s Dance

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Sea King, The

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See This Little Line

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Seeing Stick, The

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Seventh Mandarin, The

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Shape Me a Rhyme

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Simple Prince, The

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Sky Dogs

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Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep

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Sleeping Beauty

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Soft House

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Street Rhymes Around the World

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Sultan’s Perfect Tree, The

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Tam Lin

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Tea with an Old Dragon

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The Perfect Wizard

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Three Bears Holiday Rhyme Book, The

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Three Bears Rhyme Book, The

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Time for Naps

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Too Old for Naps

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Under the Star

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Water Music

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Welcome to the Green House

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Welcome to the Ice House

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Welcome to the River of Grass

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Welcome to the Sea of Sand

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What Rhymes With Moon?

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Where Have the Unicorns Gone?

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Wild Wings

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Wings

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Witch Who Wasn’t,The

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