At Last, Jewish Fairy Tales

The stories I loved best as a child were fairy tales, mostly from Andrew Lang’s color fairy books. There was little there from the Jewish tradition. And so when I finally discovered Isaac Bashevis Singer’s books—like Zlateh the Goat—as an adult, and later the folk tale collections by Howard Schwartz and Peninnah Schram, I had, at last, Jewish folk and fairy tales to share with my children and grandchild.

Jane Yolen is the author of over 200 books for children and young readers, among them The Devil’s Arithmetic (Viking/Penguin), O Jerusalem (Scholastic), and Milk and Honey (Putnam).