Jane Yolen was already an award-winning author and illustrator of more than 100 titles for young readers when her editor suggested she write a Jewish children’s book.

At first, she resisted the idea. Sure, she was Jewish. But she didn’t grow up in a religiously observant family, and she insisted she didn’t know enough about Judaism to take on the project.

Finally, she relented. Drawing on a spark of an idea about a Holocaust time-travel fantasy, Yolen turned in the first draft of what would become “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” her 1988 young adult novel. “I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to try this,’” Yolen recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency years later.

The book won immediate acclaim and garnered multiple awards. Today, it’s seen as a classic of the genre — and one that remains caught up in banned-book lists.

For Yolen, who died Thursday at 87 in her home in Western Massachusetts, “The Devil’s Arithmetic” became her signature title. Still in print, the book was also made into an Emmy Award-winning Showtime feature starring Kirsten Dunst. It was the cornerstone of a titanic legacy in children’s literature, her family said in a statement.

“It is with profound sadness that I, along with my brothers, Adam Stemple, and Jason Stemple, share the news of our mother, Jane Yolen’s passing,” her daughter Heidi Stemple wrote on Facebook, adding that Yolen had “passed gently with no pain or stress” and her family by her side, reading one of her books to her.

Yolen was born on Feb. 11, 1939, in New York City. Her father was a journalist and her mother was a psychiatric social worker until Yolen was born.

An alumna of Smith College, where she won poetry and journalism awards, she worked first as an editor in New York City, writing at her breaks and time off. Her first published book, “Pirates........

© The Times of Israel