Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
Retellings of classic folk stories about fairies–from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England, Brittany, Persia, South Africa etc. I had long wanted to do such a volume, and had presented the idea to many editors, but was always turned down. Then after I’d done the
This collection is entirely retold folk tales for the youngest listeners: “The Three Bears,” “The Three Little Pigs,” “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” “The Little Red Hen,” “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” etc. There is a storytelling CD/tape narrated by me, with musical interludes by my son Adam Stemple.
An original fairy tale about a child whose sorceress stepmother leaves her out in the woods to die. Jane Dyer wanted to illustrate an original fairy tale and I had the first three pages of this one done, without a plot in sight. The editor Maria Modugno put it under contract and hoped I’d find a story in
An original fairy tale about a good woman, the devil, a bet between the angels and gargoyles on a French cathedral, and an ugly little boy. The climax takes place on Christmas eve. I began the story after a visit to Paris with my husband, where we spent the weekend with one of my editors who was
The idea for an adult novel on the subject of the Holocaust came to me when I was watching the documentary “Shoah” in which the concentration camp Chelmno was described. It was a camp in a castle. Castle, barbed wire, and the gassing of innocent folk. It suggested the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” in a horrible way.
I have always loved the Scottish border ballad Tam Lin, first mentioned in a ballad book of 1549. It’s one of the only ones (maybe THE only one) in which the woman does the rescuing. Young Janet McKenzie (in my version) wants to have her patrimony–the old mansion of Carterhaugh–but it now belongs to the fairies.
I wrote this book as a favor to Ruth Sanderson, the artist, because the packager, Ariel, was having trouble writing the book in-house. Ruth had almost completed the paintings when it became clear that someone would have to retell the story who could write around the art work. My husband
My first hardcover collection of my fairy stories and adult stories, because the editor at Schocken was a fan. He left before the book was finished to form his own company, Peter Bedrick Books. Never a good start for a book, I have found, being orphaned like that. There was an British edition as well.
Six of these seven fairy tales are totally original–“The Hundredth Dove,” “The Maiden Made of Fire,” “The Wind Cap,” “The White Seal Maid,” “The Promise,” “The Lady and the Merman.” The seventh, “Once A Good Man,” was based on an old story. This was the third collection of fairy tales I wrote
This was the second collection of fairy tales I wrote and together with The Girl Who Cried Flowers and The Hundredth Dove led to my being called the Hans Christian Andersen of America. Putting the stories in a single volume was the idea of my astute and wonderful editor Ann K. Beneduce, and she had a hand in all my fairy tales for many years after.