Lisle, Janet Taylor

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Janet Taylor Lisle

Personal

Born February 13, 1947, in Englewood, NJ; daughter of Alden (in insurance) and Janet (an architect) Taylor; married c. 1970 (divorced); married Richard Waterman Lisle (in international banking), October 17, 1976; children: Elizabeth. Education: Smith College, B.A., 1969; Georgia State University, certificate in journalism, 1971. Hobbies and other interests: Choral activities, tennis, writing group.

Addresses

Home—RI. Office—c/o Author Mail, Philomel Books, 345 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014. Agent—Gina Maccoby, P.O. Box 60, Chappaqua, NY 10514.

Career

Writer. Has worked as a journalist in Georgia and New York; VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), Atlanta, GA, volunteer, c. 1970.

Awards, Honors

Notable Book and Book for Young Adults, American Library Association (ALA), Best Book of the '80s and Editor's Choice, Booklist, Parents' Choice Award for Fiction, and Best Book, School Library Journal, all for Sirens and Spies; Golden Kite Honor Book, 1988, Best Book, School Library Journal, Editor's Choice, Booklist, Notable Book for Children, ALA, and Parents' Choice Award, all for The Great Dimpole Oak; Newbery Honor Book, 1990, Best Book of the Year, School Library Journal, Notable Children's Book, ALA, Editor's Choice, Booklist, Horn Book Fanfare award, and Parents' Choice Award, all for Afternoon of the Elves; Best Book, School Library Journal, 1991, Best Children's Book, New York Times, Best Children's Book, Boston Globe, 1991, and Parent's Magazine Best Children's Book, all for The Lampfish of Twill; Best Book of the Year, School Library Journal, and American Bookseller Pick of the Lists, both for Forest, both 1994; Best Book, School Library Journal, 1994, for A Message from the Match Girl; Bank Street Notable Book, 1994, for Looking for Juliette and The Gold Dust Letters; Best Book, School Library Journal, New York Public Library selection, both 1999, and Notable Children's Book, ALA, 2000, all for The Lost Flower Children; Scott O'Dell Award, 2001, Riverbank Review Book of Distinction, 2001, Notable Children's Book, 2001, and Horn Book Fanfare Award, all for The Art of Keeping Cool; Best Books for Young Adults nomination, ALA, 2004, for The Crying Rocks.

Writings

JUVENILE NOVELS

The Dancing Cats of Applesap, illustrated by Joelle Shefts, Bradbury (Scarsdale, NY), 1984.

Sirens and Spies, Bradbury (Scarsdale, NY), 1985.

The Great Dimpole Oak, illustrated by Stephen Gammell, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Afternoon of the Elves, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1989.

The Lampfish of Twill, illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Forest, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1993.

The Lost Flower Children, illustrated by Satomi Ichikawa, Philomel Books (New York, NY), 1999.

The Art of Keeping Cool, Atheneum (New York, NY), 2000.

How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive, Philomel Books (New York, NY), 2002.

The Crying Rocks, Atheneum (New York, NY), 2003.

"INVESTIGATORS OF THE UNKNOWN" SERIES

The Gold Dust Letters, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Looking for Juliette, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1994.

A Message from the Match Girl, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Angela's Aliens, Orchard Books (New York, NY), 1996.

OTHER

Short fiction represented in anthologies, including Those in Peril on the Sea, 1992, and The Face in the Rafters, 1993. Contributor to magazines.

Adaptations

Afternoon of the Elves was adapted for stage and performed in Seattle, WA, at the Charlotte Martin Theater, during the 1993-94 season of the Seattle Children's Theater.

Sidelights

Cats that dance, all but invisible tiny elves in the backyard, rocks that cry out in mourning—these are all part of the fictional universe of Janet Taylor Lisle. In her award-winning books she is "drawn to the mystery of things, to the ambiguity of life that books for children often gloss over or pussy-foot around," as her long-time editor, Richard Jackson, noted to Christine Heppermann of Riverbank Review. "She's a keen observer of surfaces, a 'social writer,' in that sense; but her interest is in what's hidden. As well as why." Heppermann further explained, "Delving into one of Lisle's novels is an act of excavation, which leads to the thrilling realization that, no matter how far beneath the surface one goes, there's always more to be discovered." The author of over a dozen books for juvenile readers, Lisle won the Newbery Honor for her fourth novel, the 1989 Afternoon of the Elves, and in 2001 scored an impressive coup with the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction for her home-front World War II novel, The Art of Keeping Cool. According to Andrea Cleghorn, writing in Children's Books and Their Creators, "Lisle's books are uniformly delightful." As Lisle herself reported in the Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS), "the investigation of reality, both the inward and outward sort, is at the core of the stories I like to write." Such stories have appealed to reviewers and readers alike, making Lisle a popular mainstay in juvenile literature. As a reviewer for St. James Guide to Children's Writers put it, Lisle is "an elegant writer whose stories are carefully woven with just enough space left for readers to wonder and to imagine new possibilities at the book's close."

An East Coast Childhood

Born in 1947, Lisle was the only girl of five children born to Alden and Janet Taylor. She grew up in rural Connecticut and Rhode Island, reading and writing from an early age. As she noted in SAAS, she and her siblings would enter a "trance" while reading the works of J. R. R. Tolkien or Robert Louis Stevenson. But she was not a sedentary child; she excelled at sports such as soccer, field hockey, lacrosse, and basketball. As a sixth grader, she left her home in Farmington, Connecticut, to go to boarding school. Here she felt out of place; the new kid, she was shy with the others at first. Worse, where before she had never had problems academically, suddenly at boarding school she found herself behind the others in subjects such as math. Soon, however, her skills on the athletic field more than made up for such deficiencies and feelings of being an outsider. Sports, as she noted in SAAS, gave her an "identity." English remained her strong subject all through secondary school; from the age of ten she was secretly penning stories of her own.

Lisle majored in English at Smith College, but, unfortunately, comparing her own work to that of the greats of English literature left her feeling less than adequate. As a result, she took no creative writing classes while at Smith. She got married once she graduated, and worked for a year with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), an experience that convinced her that she wanted to go into journalism. Returning to school, she earned a degree in journalism and then worked as a journalist both in Georgia and New York for about ten years. As she noted in SAAS, she was not a standard journalist, enjoying the more "loose-limbed" human interest features over hard news beats. She went on to note that she "looked for stories covering the 'nonevent.' For instance, if the church fair was cancelled because of rain, I interviewed the workers packing up to go home, and wrote about the rivalries and the unexpected friendships that spring up behind the scenes of such events."

By this time her first marriage had ended in divorce, and in 1981 she moved to New Jersey with her second husband and their daughter. It was then she took a writing workshop that sparked her interested in fiction again. Introduced to the editor Richard Jackson by her workshop instructor, Lisle landed on her feet in this new profession. She sold her first book, The Dancing Cats of Applesap, to Jackson in 1983 and has been working with him since that time.

Novels of Magic and Wonder

The Dancing Cats of Applesap is the story of a shy ten-year-old girl who manages to save her town's drugstore and soda fountain by bringing some amazing cats together. As Ilene Cooper noted in a Horn Book article about Lisle, the story was "an utterly original fantasy" about cats that dance in a drugstore after hours to the guitar strums of the owner. Melba Morris, the protagonist of the book, brings Applesap, New York, notoriety when she helps spread the news about the cats in Mr. Jiggs's old-fashioned drugstore. This notoriety, in turn, saves the drugstore. "This story has elements found in the most enduring works of children's fiction: humor, inventiveness, and a message gently relayed," Cooper noted, writing in Booklist. Anne Osborn, in School Library Journal, called the book a "gentle but rewarding story" and"not so much a cat fantasy as a novel of character development and growth."

Lisle followed this initial publication with a more realistic young adult novel, Sirens and Spies, the story of two sisters and their secret-bearing violin teacher. As Lisle explained in SAAS, "I contrived to place a pair of sisters at the center of the story so that I could experience a little of the doubleness of sisterhood," the doubleness she was missing in her own youth surrounded by four younger brothers. Mary and Elsie take violin lessons from Miss Fitch, with Elsie being the favorite. It is therefore surprising to Mary when her sister turns against the aged teacher, accusing her of being a collaborator with the Germans during World War II in her native France. But when Miss Fitch is injured in her home by an intruder, Mary helps to unravel the secret in the teacher's past. Nancy Choice, writing in Voice of Youth Advocates, called the book a "moving story about friendship, forgiveness, and the awful power of secrets." Zena Sutherland of Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books added more praise, noting that Sirens and Spies is a "truly sophisticated book," while David A. Lindsey in School Library Journal dubbed it "a piece of quality fiction."

Lisle wrote a quartet of imaginative and award-winning novels for children and young adults from 1987 to 1993, including The Great Dimpole Oak, Afternoonof the Elves, The Lampfish Twill, and Forest. Something of a technical tour de force, The Great Dimpole Oak cuts back and forth from Paris to Bombay to small town America where a majestic oak tree is weaving its subtle magic over all concerned. Everyone who comes into contact with the tree is affected in this "feat of originality and plotting," according to a critic in Publishers Weekly, who concluded: "A beautifully orchestrated novel, this is short yet deeply satisfying." Anita Silvey, writing in Horn Book, found everything about the book, from writing to cover art, "marked by exquisite taste," and concluded that Lisle's third novel "contains no echoes of other creators' voices."

"A fascinating portrayal of a manipulative yet touching friendship" is how Annette Curtis Klause summed up Lisle's next book, Afternoon of the Elves, in School Library Journal. The outcast, Sara-Kate, befriends the younger, more popular Hillary by showing
her an elf village in her back yard, but whether it is real, or the imaginative invention of a hardship child looking for a friend, is uncertain. Even after Hillary discovers the truth about Sara-Kate: that she is alone caring for her sick mother and desperately trying to cope with domestic duties and unpaid bills, the uncertainty remains. Neither Hillary nor the reader are ever quite sure of the reality of the elves, but once social services intervenes and takes Sara-Kate from her mother, Hillary sets up the tiny village in her own yard. "At the heart of the story for me is the power of imagination, especially a child's, to reinvent its landscape, to change what is painful or hateful into something not only tolerable, but wonderful," Lisle has commented. "We all survive by dint of fictions we invent about ourselves and our world, but children do it best. They are the most vulnerable and have the most at stake." In Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Betsy Hearne described Afternoon of the Elves as "a carefully developed story focused on two children who influence each other in realistic, subtle stages."

With The Lampfish of Twill, the magic is underwater. An old fisherman leads Eric down via a whirlpool into an ancient and glorious world at the center of the Earth. A Publishers Weekly contributor compared The Lampfish of Twill favorably to other classics of the imagination such as A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and noted that it "tickles the imagination and challenges preconceived notions about reality and illusion." A Kirkus Reviews commentator called it "a splendid, unique fantasy" in which "fantastical creatures help convey truths that transcend the harsh realities of a world whose rituals and prejudices are all too familiar."

In Forest, Lisle tells an "unusual animal fantasy," according to Horn Book's Hanna B. Zeiger. Told from the viewpoints of twelve-year-old Amber Padgett and the sentient squirrel Woodbine, the tale is a fable of misunderstanding between people and animals. Upper Forest belongs to the squirrels, while Lower Forest is the humans' domain, but Amber trespasses when she builds a treehouse in the squirrels' territory in an attempt to get away from all the violence she sees on television. By coming into Upper Forest she starts dissension among the squirrels. While Woodbine is sure the girl means no harm, the more volatile squirrel, Barker, is not so sure and organizes squirrel armies in the high branches. Meanwhile, Amber's father is organizing squirrel-killing squads on the ground. Amber and Woodbine must work together to stop ensuring violence in this "gripping account of the conflict that develops between humans and squirrels when both groups feel threatened," as Judy Freeman observed in Instructor. Zeiger went on to call the book a "fast-paced adventure story with touches of humor," and a reviewer for Publishers Weekly had further praise for the novel, describing it as an "expertly crafted promotion of open-mindedness and tolerance [that] is sure to hold its audience's attention." And Carol Fox, reviewing the same novel in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, commented, "Lisle has created a world of innocence marked with heartache, truth infused with absurdity, and wisdom relinquished to recklessness—all in the guise of animal fantasy."

From Mysteries to Histories

Lisle presents a "quirky" group of friends in her "delectable" series, "Investigators of the Unknown," according to Heppermann. The quartet of novels in this series includes The Gold Dust Letters, Looking for Juliette, A Message from the Match Girl, and Angela's Aliens. Written for a slightly younger audience than Lisle's other fiction, these novels each feature a year in the lives of several nine-year-olds. Their investigations into seemingly magical occurrences teach them some very realistic truths about their own lives. The series has been largely praised by reviewers for its imagination, construction of plot, and empathy for childhood concerns. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly commended the final volume, Angela's Aliens, and the entire series, for being more concerned with "opening the door to possibilities in human relationships than on solving supernatural mysteries."

Similarly, Lisle writes for a younger audience with The Lost Flower Children, a "blend of gentle fantasy and tough reality." Nine-year-old Olivia and her younger sister, Nellie, are sent to live with their great-aunt Minty after the death of their mother. The younger sister, Nellie, has become possessed by odd behavior and desperately attached to Olivia since the death of their mother, but soon Olivia is immersed in a magical quest every bit as dominating as the sense of responsibility she feels for her sister. Aunt Minty was once known to have a wonderful garden, but it has long since gone to weed. Reading through some of her aunt's books, Olivia is surprised to find one that appears to describe her aunt's garden, a tale called "The Lost Flower Children." The author of this tale posits a magic spell cast over children at an outdoor tea party, turning them into flowers in the garden. A band of evil green fairies has cast this spell, and it cannot be broken until a set of eight teacups and a teapot buried by the fairies are dug up. Olivia spends much of the summer digging in the overgrown garden, finding cup after cup. Soon the twin plots of the healing process of the sisters and the search for the lost flower children merge and resonate. According to a Horn Book reviewer, "The parallels between the troubled contemporary girls and the bewitched flower children bring a bit of magic to the natural process of the girls' healing and a sense of normalcy to the book's fantasy elements." Both love and responsibility have a transformational power in this novel. By its end, the sisters and their aunt "all blossom in the overrun garden," as the Publishers Weekly contributor observed. The Horn Book reviewer also had praise for this "tantalizing, delicately told book that trembles on the edge of fantasy." Similarly, Booklist's Shelle Rosenfeld commended the "depth and appeal" of the novel's characters, further calling it "humorous, poignant, and magical . . . an irresistible mystery resulting in personal transformation."

Lisle's Scott O'Dell Award-winning title, The Art of Keeping Cool, has less of the magical about it. A historical tale, it is set along the Rhode Island coast during World War II. "This story drew on three sources of inspiration," Lisle wrote on her Web site. The first of these was her father's own war-time experiences as a bomber pilot flying missions out of England. He would never talk about these experiences, but they seemed to affect him for the rest of his life. A second inspiration came from the fact that her own home town on the Rhode Island coast was occupied by the U.S. Army while searching for Nazi submarines that had sunk several vessels off the coast in 1942. Lisle's third inspiration came from her desire to deal with the Nazi horror, which "propelled not only ethnic and racial cleansing, but as a vicious sideline, the eradication of personal creativity and free expression in the arts," the author noted. In her novel, Lisle presents a German abstract artist, Abel Hoffman, exiled from his own country, and resident just outside a little Rhode Island village. "He is German," Lisle wrote on her Web site, "citizen of a country which was our national enemy at the time, and yet he embodies the personal and artistic freedoms for which Americans were fighting and dying."

The novel focuses on the friendship of two adolescent cousins, Robert and Elliot, with the German painter, who slowly becomes the object of suspicion and hatred in the little community and accused of spying for the enemy. Robert has come to the small town with his mother to live with his surly grandfather. Elliot, his artistic cousin, becomes his boon companion. But when the nervous Elliot makes friends with the German painter, Robert is fearful about what will happen if the bigoted grandfather finds out. As the summer draws on and military activity escalates in the little coastal town, dangers also increase for Elliot in his friendship with Hoffman, who teaches him painting skills. Meanwhile, family secrets at home serve to further increase the tension in this "wrenching WWII novel," as a Publishers Weekly reviewer described it. When the town suddenly explodes in hatred toward the German painter, Robert is instrumental in helping them track him down; later he is sickened with what he has done, realizing that his actions are little better than those of the mobs he has heard about who persecuted artists in Germany. The Publishers Weekly critic further noted that Lisle is "as apt at writing historical fiction as she is at penning fantasy." Booklist's Hazel Rochman had similar praise for the title, calling it a "powerful story" whose characters are "drawn with subtlety and depth." Cyrisse Jaffee, writing in School Library Journal, however, complained that "the focus is clearly on men in the household," with only "cursory treatment . . . given to the women's feeling and thoughts." Despite this drawback, Jaffee found the novel to be a "heartfelt story of family dynamics and the harmful power of prejudice and hatred." Horn Book's Mary M. Burns had no such reservations, finding Lisle's cast of characters "unforgettable," and commending the work as a "brilliantly conceived, multi-layered novel" that is at once "engrossing, challenging, and well paced."

Lisle's 2002 novel, How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive, is also based in part on her personal experiences. On her Web site, Lisle commented that "the way Archie Jones becomes a writer isn't exactly how I started, but we do have some things in common." One of these is that Lisle, like her fictional character, told made up stories for younger siblings. In Archie's case, there is only one such sibling, but in Lisle's, there were four siblings. And like her protagonist, Lisle kept such made up tales in her private notebook. Archie's tale is "The Mysterious Mole People," which he recounts to six-year-old Oggie at bedtime to help him sleep. Soon this story takes on larger dimensions in Archie's life, and he continues to write the story late into the night in his closet. Oggie and Archie have grown to depend on one another since their parents split up. Now the two boys shuttle between their mother's home and their father's apartment which they share with his pregnant girlfriend. When Oggie's wallet is stolen by a street gang called the Night Riders, and Archie tries to get it back, he ends up being forced to join the gang and participate in their crimes. Suddenly his mole story and real life are combining in scary ways, and the two boys have to learn to not only depend on each other but to fight for their own survival, as well. Booklist's Cooper noted how this novel is, unlike most of Lisle's books, "grounded in the everyday," yet with some fantasy overtones. Cooper went on to conclude that "mixing the slightly unbelievable with, what is, essentially, a survival story, seems workable in Lisle's experienced hands." Carol A. Edwards, writing in School Library Journal, thought the novel was "fast-paced" and "adventure-filled," while a critic for Kirkus Reviews found that the theme of post-divorce coping "is given freshness by two lovably engaging main characters, humorous narration, and slightly screwball plot that (although improbable) steams forward with real tension and danger."

Rhode Island once again serves as the background setting in Lisle's 2003 novel, The Crying Rocks, in which Lisle "once again . . . demonstrates her ability to sensitively and suspensefully unveil enigmatic characters' secrets," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Thirteen-year-old Joelle is perplexed and saddened about her past. Adopted at age five by a Rhode Island couple, she has heard horror stories about her birth in Chicago and how her mother might have thrown her out of a window. Later, she supposedly collected cigarette butts for a woman who kept her in a wooden crate. Now, she and her friend Carlos, who also has his own cruel memories of a brother killed in a climbing accident, try to purge such painful history by taking wilderness walks to the Crying Rocks, a site where many of the local Native Americans, the Narragansetts, died. These rocks have ever since, according to legend, made a mournful sound, and it is there that the two teens confront their own pasts. School Library Journal's Sue Giffard lauded this "lovely portrait of a strong girl facing her past and present with dignity and courage," further predicting that it would "receive a wide and enthusiastic readership." Similarly, a critic for Kirkus Reviews commented that "there's plenty here to captivate readers." Claire Rosser, writing in Kliatt, thought that Lisle "connects the present with the past in an intriguing novel," and further praise came from Booklist's Cooper, who concluded that "Lisle's fluidly written story fascinates."

If you enjoy the works of Janet Taylor Lisle

If you enjoy the works of Janet Taylor Lisle, you may also want to check out the following books:

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Changeling, 1970.

Mollie Hunter, The Mermaid Summer, 1988.

Donna Jo Napoli, Stones in Water, 1997.

In all her fiction, whether directly or indirectly employing elements of fantasy and magic, Lisle uses such techniques not for sensational effects, but as a method for her protagonists to come to a better understanding of their own lives and predicaments. "I believe in the unknown," Lisle wrote on her Web site. "There's a lot we don't know about the world, like how big the universe is, or whether time stops somewhere or goes on forever. Scientists don't have enough facts yet to solve these mysteries. I think of magic as being that which is still waiting to be discovered. I put it in my books so readers (me included) can practice keeping an open mind. The unknown is all around us."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Children's Books and Their Creators, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1995.

Dictionary of American Children's Fiction, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1993.

St. James Guide to Children's Writers, 5th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Something about the Author Autobiography Series, Volume 14, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 1984, Ilene Cooper, review of The Dancing Cats of Applesap, p. 1550; October 15, 1993, Janice Del Negro, review of Forest, p. 443; February 1, 1994, Ilene Cooper, review of The Gold Dust Letters, p. 1007; September 15, 1994, Ilene Cooper, review of Looking for Juliette, p. 136; October 1, 1995, Julie Yates Walton, review of A Message from the Match Girl, p. 316; November 1, 1996, Kay Weisman, review of Angela's Aliens, pp. 498-499; May 15, 1999, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of The Lost Flower Children, p. 1690; September 15, 2000, Hazel Rochman, review of The Art of Keeping Cool, p. 237; February 15, 2001, Brad Hooper and Stephanie Zvirin, "News & Views," p. 1100; April 1, 2001, Stephanie Zvirin, review of The Art of Keeping Cool, p. 1611; October 15, 2003, Ilene Cooper, review of The Crying Rocks, p. 405.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, June, 1985, Zena Sutherland, review of Sirens and Spies, pp. 188-189; October, 1988, Betsy Hearne, review of Afternoon of the Elves, p. 37; January, 1994, Carol Fox, review of Forest, p. 160.

Horn Book, January-February, 1988, Anita Silvey, review of The Great Dimpole Oak, p. 64; November-December, 1988, Ilene Cooper, "New Voices, New Visions: Janet Taylor Lisle," pp. 755-758; March-April, 1994, Hanna B. Zeiger, review of Forest, pp. 199-200; September-October, 1997, Mary M. Burns, "Theatre for Young Audiences," pp. 594-595; May, 1999, review of The Lost Flower Children, p. 333; November, 2000, Mary M. Burns, review of The Art of Keeping Cool, p. 757; March-April, 2002, Peter D. Sieruta, review of How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive, p. 214.

Instructor, April, 1994, Judy Freeman, review of Forest, pp. 65-66.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1991, review of TheLampfish of Twill, p. 1288; October 1, 1995, review of A Message from the Match Girl, p. 1432; March 1, 2002, review of How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive, pp. 338-339; October 1, 2003, review of The Crying Rocks, p. 1227.

Kliatt, July, 2002, Claire Rosser, review of The Art ofKeeping Cool, p. 21; November, 2003, Claire Rosser, review of The Crying Rocks, p. 6.

Publishers Weekly, October 9, 1987, review of TheGreat Dimpole Oak, p. 88; September 13, 1991, review of The Lampfish of Twill, p. 80; August 30, 1993, review of Forest, p. 97; January 10, 1994, review of The Gold Dust Letters, p. 62; October 24, 1994, review of Looking for Juliette, p. 62; September 25, 1995, review of A Message from the Match Girl, p. 57; September 16, 1996, review of Angela's Aliens, p. 84; April 12, 1999, review of The Lost Flower Children, p. 75; September 4, 2000, review of The Art of Keeping Cool, p. 108; January 22, 2001, In the Winners' Circle, p. 183; April 16, 2001, review of The Lost Flower Children, p. 67; March 11, 2002, review of How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive, p. 73; November 17, 2003, review of The Crying Rocks, p. 65.

Riverbank Review, fall, 2002, Christine Heppermann, "Janet Taylor Lisle: The Truth Is Never Easy to Define in This Novelist's Provocative and Surprising Stories."

School Library Journal, October, 1984, Anne Osborn, review of The Dancing Cats of Applesap, p. 159; August, 1985, David A. Lindsey, review of Sirens and Spies, p. 78; September, 1989, Annette Curtis Klause, review of Afternoon of the Elves, p. 254; April, 1994, Starr LaTronica, review of The Gold Dust Letters, pp. 128-129; August, 1994, Ellen Fader, review of Looking for Juliette, p. 158; November, 1996, p. 108; October, 2000, Cyrisse Jaffee, review of The Art of Keeping Cool, p. 164; March, 2002, Carol A. Edwards, review of How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive, p. 234; December, 2003, Sue Giffard, review of The Crying Rocks, p. 156.

Stone Soup, March-April, 1995, Christina Hloros, review of Forest, pp. 34-35.

Voice of Youth Advocates, December, 1985, Nancy Choice, review of Sirens and Spies, p. 320.