Title Here There Be Angels Series Here There Be... Author Jane Yolen Cover Art David Wilgus Publisher Harcourt Brace & Company - 1996 First Printing Harcourt Brace & Company - 1996 Category Anthology Warnings None Main Characters See below Main Elements Angels

The fourth in a series of beautiful gift books, by acclaimed master storyteller Jane Yolen, Here There Be Angels is a heavenly collection of celestial musings, stories and poems. Drawn from the author's uncommon imagination, as well as the legends of cultures around the world, these offerings reveal angels in many guises - from the everyday to the extraordinary, from the traditional to the avant-garde - performing simple miracles and transforming the lives of the people they touch, forever.

Exquisitely illustrated by David Wilgus' duotone pencil drawings, each piece is also prefaced by an author's note, illuminating Jane Yolen's thoughts on writing, storytelling, and then angels in our midst.

• Another Count of Angels
• Once a Good Man
• A Tale of Two Peters
• The School Visitor
• Jacob's Ladder
• The House of Seven Angels
• Manya's Story
• Lady Merion's Angel
• Angelica
• The Boy who had Wings
• Child's Prayer
• Brother Kenan's Bell
• Angel City Blues
• The Word the Devil Made Up
• Fallen Angel
• Thinking of Angels
• Wrestling with Angels
• Angel Feather
• On the Head of a Pin

I had previously read Yolen's anthologies of dragons and unicorns, and since I had this third book in the series, it actually motivated me to do an entire year dedicated to reading about gods, demons, and of course angels. For each pantheon I decided to go back to the beginning as much as I could before reading the modern fantasies based on the original lore, for example angels I started with Dante's Divine Comedy. Interestingly though, I learned a lot more about angel lore from Yolen's children stories.

I'll admit I didn't care much for the short poems, if I enjoy poetry at all it usually needs to be longer and for me, generally has to rhyme. But some of the stories I really loved. A few are retellings of classics (like the Good Man who wanted to visit Heaven and Hell), others are very unique takes on angels, such as the one where the girl finds an angel (a cherub really) and it flies into her kitchen and the cook is trying to get it out of the house with a broom as if it were some kind of pest. And not all the angels are good, the fallen show up here in a couple different variations with a surprisingly twist ending to one (Angelica). Not every tale is strictly about an angel either, sometimes it is just a fluke of birth.

My favorites were Angelica (due to the surprise ending), The Word the Devil Made Up, Fallen Angel (perhaps because it was the longest and the most fleshed out, and the kids trying to figure out if the angel was a man or a woman 'cause he had long hair and robes) and finally Wrestling with Angels (because how could you not be touched by a cop handcuffing the Angel of Death who has come to take the life of a child in a park).

Wilgus' artwork continues to be beautiful monochrome pencil, though the face on the cover stares at you so intently it's eerie. He often didn't draw the angel itself, or if he did it was in the background, but still can't fault the beauty captured in his illustrations.

If nothing else this book made me want to learn more about angel lore, it reminded me how angels were often portrayed as having brilliantly coloured wings and not white, that there are different levels of angels from cherubin to seraph. And while I know the names of Samael and Metatron and others, I know very little about each one.