09/11/2017
This slight collection contains several very strong stories but is weakened by its overarching theme: all of the pieces are riffs on famous fairy tales, or on the lives of writers or famous historical personages, and there just isn’t enough variation in the subject matter. So, for instance, Yolen provides five separate versions of Alice in Wonderland: one (“Wonder Land”) is a vignette, two are poems, and the other two are decent stories but, in this context, feel somewhat redundant. The best pieces here, such as “Evian Steel,” a genuinely subversive and affecting take on Arthurian legend, stand with the finest of Yolen’s work, but these tales are readily available elsewhere: “Sister Emily’s Lightship,” a justly famous story of an encounter between Emily Dickinson and an alien, has already been the title piece in a separate Yolen collection. This book, therefore, is both full of gorgeous and masterly writing and entirely inessential. Yolen is a prolific and recognized writer who has written more than 350 books for teens and adults (this is her first adult book in several years) and won, among others, the Caldecott and Nebula Awards; her many fans will happily pick this up. Agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. (Nov.)

Praise for The Emerald Circus
2018 World Fantasy Award winner
Publishers Weekly’s Big Indie Books of Fall 2017
A School Library Journal All-Star pick, Adult Books for Teens
Foreword Reviewer’s Choice—Favorite Books of 2017
Locus 2017 Recommended Reading List

“An impressive overview of the author’s breadth and career, this collection will appeal to the author’s existing devotees—or to anyone who has ever thought that “happily ever after” left too many questions.”
—Kirkus

[STARRED REVIEW] “Beauty sneaks out to get a Christmas gift for the Beast, the first of several wrong decisions in ‘The Gift of the Magicians, with Apologies to You Know Who.’ In ‘Blown Away,’ Dorothy’s twister takes her away, not to a magical land but [T]he Emerald Circus, and she returns home as a gymnastic performer who changes many lives. Wendy leads a labor strike against the Lost Boys in ‘Lost Girls.’ After more than a decade, Yolen (Briar Rose; Sister Emily’s Starship and Other Stories) returns with 16 stories that take readers sideways and upside down through beloved fairy tales and classic tales such as Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz, while also reimagining the lives of famous storytellers such as Hans Christian Anderson, Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. VERDICT: These delightful retellings of favorite stories will captivate newcomers and fans of Yolen as she once again delivers the magic, humor, and lovely prose that has attracted readers for years.”
—Library Journal

[STARRED REVIEW] “Though only one of the 16 stories in Yolen’s latest story collection is newly published, the selections are anything but haphazard. The central vision of the compilation is the reimagining of folktales, legends, literature, and history. More than that, the volume feels unified by themes and imagery. The most obvious connections are three retellings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and three takes on the quasi-historical basis of the King Arthur myths. But even these seemingly discrete blocks of stories feed into the rest of the volume. One of the Arthur tales, for example, features the story of Merlin being told to Geoffrey of Monmouth, the real author of some of the earliest Arthurian legends. Yolen takes up this thread of focusing on the creative process again and again as she weaves stories of the magic behind Hans Christian Andersen, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson. And of course, every entry contains Yolen’s crystalline prose, which captures the magic in reality, and vice versa, with ease and grace. Each tale is accompanied by a brief note from Yolen and a related poem, almost all written newly for this work. VERDICT: These highly entertaining retellings are perfect for teens fans of fairy tales and classic literature, though they are easily enjoyed without any background knowledge.”
—School Library Journal, starred review

“Jane Yolen’s Emerald Circus may be my favorite book of the year, period, with apologies to Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne. Many years ago, when I had my own blog, I wrote a post celebrating the versatility of Yolen—one of the few authors who can write top-shelf books at any age level. Emerald Circus is a perfect example of her fluid but rock-solid prose.”
—Mark Flowers, School Library Journal

“Ever the wordsmith, Yolen dazzles with her first short story collection for adults in years.”
—Booklist

“This excellent collection reimagines folktales, fairy tales, and sometimes historical people in new and surprising light. It is a brilliant example of short-form storytelling by one of the treasures of the science fiction community.”
—Brandon Sanderson, author of Mistborn

“Jane Yolen’s The Emerald Circus is full of marvels. She introduces familiar acts and actors into her rings and then tricks us into seeing them from complex, unexpected angles. She turns toads into witches, Sir Lancelot into a 600-year-old monk, Dorothy into a tightrope walker, and Emily Dickinson into a spacefarer. The stories themselves change between one reading and another, always revealing more, always at a different slant than before, in language that is rich, unholy, and, like the tales themselves, beautifully unpredictable. From Snow Queen to spaceship, The Emerald Circus is a delight.”
—Patricia A. McKillip, author of the Riddle-Master trilogy and Wonders of the Invisible World

“An excellent collection of fairy tale ‘retellings’ written by Nebula Award-winning author Jane Yolen . . . a collection I would recommend to everyone.”
—Infinite Text

“Jane Yolen is a consummate storyteller, weaving old and new threads to create tales rich in wisdom and depth. The Emerald Circus is an utter delight.”
—Juliet Marillier, award-winning author of Sevenwaters series

[STARRED REVIEW]“The Emerald Circus dances at the border between bucking tradition and paying homage to the great stories and figures of ages past. The result is a brilliant assemblage of narratives with the potential to leave an audience spellbound.”
—Foreword

“Talk about imaginary gardens with real toads in them! In this wide-ranging short story collection, Jane Yolen’s scholarship and creative genius combine to bestow upon the reader fantastic new intimacy with venerable tales and persons.”
—Nancy Springer, author of The White Hart and I Am Mordred

“Jane Yolen facets her glittering stories with the craft of a master jeweller. Everything she writes, including The Emerald Circus, is original and timeless, deliciously creepy and disturbingly lovely.”
—Elizabeth Wein, author of Code Name Verity

“In this masterful collection, Jane Yolen draws upon myth, fairy tales, history, poetry, and children's classics from Alice to Oz to fashion new tales from the bones of the old. There is simply no better storyteller working in the fantasy field today. She's a national treasure.”
—Terri Windling, author of The Wood Wife and The Essential Bordertown

“What a joy it is to watch Jane Yolen burrow into the hearts of familiar stories and dwell in possibilities we’d never imagined. It’s all done with Yolen’s trademark wisdom, a healthy dollop of subversion, and a twinkle in the eye. A delight!”
—Susan Fletcher, author of Dragon’s Milk and Shadow Spinner

“Jane Yolen’s collection The Emerald Circus is pure delight for anyone who craves inspired retellings of classics from literature, or re-imaginings of the lives of real literary figures. 5/5 stars”
—YA Books Central

“With over 350 books, Jane Yolen is a legend in the world of children's and young-adult literature, but her acerbic and witty adult fiction and poetry offer their own pleasures. The 16 stories here, each accompanied by a related poem and notes, revisit some iconic classics, but always from a new, thought-provoking angle. . .”
—Chicago Tribune

★ 12/01/2017
Though only one of the 16 stories in Yolen's latest collection is newly published, the selections are anything but haphazard. The central vision of the compilation is the reimagining of folktales, legends, literature, and history. More than that, the volume feels unified by themes and imagery. The most obvious connections are three retellings of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and three takes on the quasi-historical basis of the King Arthur myths. But even these seemingly discrete blocks of stories feed into the rest of the volume. One of the Arthur tales, for example, features the story of Merlin being told to Geoffrey of Monmouth, the real author of some of the earliest Arthurian legends. Yolen takes up this thread of focusing on the creative process again and again as she weaves stories of the magic behind Hans Christian Andersen, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson. And of course, every entry contains Yolen's crystalline prose, which captures the magic in reality, and vice versa, with ease and grace. Each tale is accompanied by a brief note from Yolen and a related poem, almost all written newly for this work. VERDICT These highly entertaining retellings are perfect for teen fans of fairy tales and classic literature, though they are easily enjoyed without any background knowledge.—Mark Flowers, Springstowne Library, Vallejo, CA

2017-09-03
A collection of short stories, mostly reinventions of fairy tales, by Yolen (Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts, 2017, etc.), whose award-winning body of work stretches from sci-fi/fantasy to children's literature to poetry to cookbooks.Yolen's collection gathers together one new story along with 15 previously published pieces, including the Nebula-winning novella Lost Girls, a feminist deconstruction of Peter Pan in which a pragmatic modern girl winds up stuck as a Wendy. But Neverland isn't the only imaginary land visited: "Blown Away" explores the acrobatic Dorothy, who returns to Kansas, and the reader visits Wonderland in both "Tough Alice" and "Rabbit Hole," the latter a touching reflection on Alice's last trip. (There's also "Wonder Land," the coming-of-age story of Alison, whose sacred mysteries are grounded in the real world.) Arthurian England hosts four stories, with Evian Steel, another novella, showing the forging of crucial bits of Arthurian lore. The real world (or something close to it) intrudes with the Nebula-winning "Sister Emily's Lightship," best described as "Emily Dickinson meets a Martian," and the quirkily charming "The Jewel in the Toad Queen's Crown," a musing on the unlikely, but perhaps magical, friendship between Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli. Homages to O. Henry, Poe, the brothers Grimm, and Keats are also present. The strongest offerings dig fresh ground rather than riffing too closely on their source material: "A Knot of Toads" stands out as a creepy look at one's own assumptions and judgments. Though only one of the stories is new, true fans will delight in Yolen's notes and poems that follow the collection. An impressive overview of the author's breadth and career, this collection will appeal to the author's existing devotees—or to anyone who has ever thought that "happily ever after" left too many questions.