The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales by Jane Yolen
"The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales" by Jane Yolen is a collection of five short fantasy stories that intertwine human characters with mythical beings and the elemental forces of nature. Each tale is beautifully illustrated by David Palladini, with a mix of black-and-white and vibrant color drawings that enhance the thematic elements of the stories. The collection includes notable tales such as "The Girl Who Cried Flowers," where Olivia, a woman who cries flowers, faces a transformative journey due to her desire to please others. Another story, "Dawn-Strider," highlights themes of friendship and self-acceptance through the tale of a giant who learns to embrace the sunlight with the help of a young child.
Other narratives explore profound themes such as the consequences of arrogance in "The Lad Who Stared Everyone Down" and the realization of destiny in "The Weaver of Tomorrow." Yolen’s work is rooted in the revival of storytelling that emerged in the 1960s, emphasizing the moral and psychological significance of fairy tales for both children and adults. Her stories reflect complex human experiences while retaining the enchanting essence of traditional folklore, making them relevant across generations.
On this Page
The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales by Jane Yolen
First published: 1974; illustrated
Subjects: Coming-of-age, death, love and romance, nature, and the supernatural
Type of work: Short fiction
Recommended Ages: 10-18
Form and Content
The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales contains five short fantasies in which human and mythical characters are linked closely with elemental forces of nature. Each tale is accompanied by full-page and double-page illustrations by David Palladini. Some are black-and-white drawings of the tales’ symbolic characters, objects, and landscapes in bold outlines. In the color illustrations, the predominance of dark earth tones matches the stories’ natural settings and haunting atmosphere, while highlights of brighter color draw attention to significant images—sunlight and sunsets, signal fires, snow and ice, flowers, the faces and figures of characters.
In creating the main character for the title story “The Girl Who Cried Flowers,” Jane Yolen was inspired by Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (c. 1478), a famous Italian Renaissance painting based on classical myths, and by ancient lore about trees inhabited by the spirits of beautiful women. Olivia, found in an olive tree as a baby, becomes a generous woman who cries whenever someone asks for the beautiful flowers that drop from her eyes, until she promises her husband that she will stay happy and never cry. Eventually, her conflicting desires to please both her husband and the townspeople lead to her transformation into an olive tree, which produces olives for her husband to harvest and a magical array of flowers that bloom until his death.
“Dawn-Strider” portrays a giant who retreats into the night and imprisons the beloved sun child, Dawn-Strider, in his cave because his rough reflection in the lake by day confirms his belief that everyone fears him. Dawn-Strider and a human child transform the giant from Night-Walker to Sun-Walker, teaching him to find happiness by following the sun and enjoying their friendship. In “The Weaver of Tomorrow,” a curious girl stubbornly seeking the truth about the future is sent to live with the old woman who weaves the golden threads of human life. Eventually, Vera learns that her curiosity has brought her sorrow, since all threads lead to death, but it has also led her to a beloved mentor and her inescapable destiny as the weaver for the next hundred years. “The Lad Who Stared Everyone Down” depicts a boy punished for arrogantly insisting that nothing is greater than he is. After accepting the challenge to stare down the sun, the lad is doomed to a lifetime of staring at the image burned permanently into his eyes.
In the fifth tale, “Silent Bianca,” a young woman with white face and hair speaks in slivers of ice “that cut through lies.” By using her magic voice to trick the guards into returning home, she wins entry to the palace, thus proving to the king’s councilors that she is as wise as the king. He marries her and benefits from her loving advice whenever he patiently warms her words at his hearth.
Critical Context
Jane Yolen first became a leader in the revival of storytelling and fantasy writing in the 1960’s. These traditions had lost favor in the United States by the mid-twentieth century because of the spread of mass media, the growing popularity of psychological and social realism in children’s fiction, and adult concerns about the unrealistic content and damaging influences of many older tales. Yolen, a songwriter as well as a writer and editor of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, saw the storytelling revival as an outgrowth of the folk movement in the 1960’s. The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales appeared in 1974, the same year that the annual storytelling festival began in Jonesboro, Tennessee. The following year, Bruno Bettelheim’s extremely influential book The Uses of Enchantment, affirmed the literary and psychological importance of fairy tales for children. In her own defense of folklore and fantasy, Touch Magic (1981), Yolen compares magical stories to mirrors and many-faceted dreams; for young and old, they reflect both dark and light facets of the human condition, offering morals that are not easily seen.
After the success of this first collection and early picture books such as The Girl Who Loved the Wind (1972), Yolen wrote scores of other tales based on myths, legends, history, and folklore. They have appeared in picture books illustrated by many important artists and in collections by Yolen and others for children and adults. “The Weaver of Tomorrow” reappeared in Yolen’s Tales of Wonder (1983), a volume of short fantasies for adults. She has been compared to earlier writers such as Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde for her ability to weave traditional folk motifs into eloquent, evocative original tales that reflect symbolically the concerns of the author’s milieu. Yolen’s stories are important for both children and adults because they retain the utopian outlook of traditional fairy tales without ignoring the conflicts and complexities of human experience. Silent Bianca is like the heroine in many fairy tales by Yolen and other modern writers: Although misunderstood by others in her society, she is wise and brave and wins the heart of a man who is her equal.