OCR Document


 

BOOK REVIEWS 

Yolen, Jane. Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the 
Literature of Childhood. 2nd edition. Little Rock: August House, 
2000. 128p. paper $11.95. 

It was with great delight and the feeling of sitting down with a 
trusted old friend that I read this second edition. The original essays, to 
which I have turned to again and again in the past nineteen years, were 
as fresh and as relevant as they were on my first reading. The only 
change I noticed was a reference to Xena and Hercules. 

There is a magic in Yolen's writing style, allowing the reader to 
become a listener to her story about story. In her opening essay, "How 
Basic is Shazam" she talks of the importance of introducing mythology 
to children: 

These four functions of myth and folklore 
should establish the listening to and learning 
of the old tales as being among the most basic 
elements of education: creating a landscape 
of allusion, enabling us to understand our 
own and other cultures from the inside out, 
providing an adaptable tool of therapy, and 
stating in symbolic or metaphoric terms the 
abstract truths of our common human 
experience. 

In those first essays, Yolen explains the ability stories have to 
empower and to transform lives, how they provide a sense of good and 
evil, and link us not only to our past but to our future. She explores the 
roles of teller and listener, the spirit of "once upon a time," and the need 
for children to receive not only the gift of words, but also the capacity to 
wonder. She talks about the need for "tough magic" - the understanding 
that to receive, one has to give, and the importance of children hearing 
stories and reading books that confront the evils, fantasy, and real, and 
stand up to them. 

When one came to the end of the first edition, there was a feeling of 
completeness, but Yolen has added Part Four, called Touchtones, which 
contains six new essays. Here she, among other things, writes about 
story when censorship and morality come calling. "Story in Ten Fits" 
tells, with great humor, what story is not, and thus explains what 

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BOOK REVIEWS 

story is. In "Touchstones" Yolen chooses five children's books which she 
considers the touchstones of fantasy writing. "Fabling to the Near Night" 
uses seven books to explore prejudices or "cultural baggage" with a plea 
that we be aware of both the "hidden and open messages" in every story. 

Yolen tackles three popular folktales in "Killing the Other" and 
points out the need to read below the surface and to examine the layers 
of story to find the true richness. With "An Experiential Act" she uses 
time-travel books and her writing of The Devil's Arithmetic to show how 
the past can be interwoven with the present and the future-a living and 
continuous process of which they are a part. 

In the final essay, she reflects on how, and maybe why, we live our 
lives through metaphor, and this reader truly felt that she had touched 
magic and had the power to pass it on. A selective bibliography of books 
and articles that have been "very special, helpful stimulating companions 
and resources" follow the essays. 

Touch Magic is all of the above and more; it is a book that can, and 
should, be read again and again. Jane Yolen writes "A book remains for 
the life of its paper and print and thus its imprint persists on the lives of 
its hundreds, even thousands of readers." For children everywhere, my 
hope is that this imprint will persist on the lives of millions. 

MERLA HARRIS, storyteller 

1 Tatar, Maria, ed. The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism. A Norton 
Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 

2 Luthi, Max. Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales. 
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976. 

3 Wilson, William A. "Sibelius, the Kalevala and Karelianism." In The 
Sibelius Companion. Edited by Glenda Dawn Goss. Westport, CT: Greenwood 
Press, 1996, 43-60. 
 4 Wilson, 48. 
 5 Libraries Unlimited: Books & Resources for Librarians & Media 
Specialists. 

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