SHERWOOD

Prolific Yolen (Not One Damsel in Distress, 2000, etc.) proffers eight tales that further embroider the legend of Robin Hood, by a mix of new and veteran authors. Most of the episodes center around a younger version of the hero or one of his followers: Yolen herself opens by recounting the newborn Robin’s introduction to the Fair Folk; in the following two stories, Robin and the formidable Marian meet as children. In Nancy Springer’s “Know Your True Enemy,” an outlaw child thirsting for vengeance after the killing of his father finds himself saving the life of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s son. The legend passes to the next generation in Mary Frances Zambreno’s contribution, and Adam Stemple takes it hilariously into our own future by setting an Artificial Intelligence with a Robin Hood complex loose in cyberspace. Though the stories will stand alone, readers already familiar with Robin’s career and better-known associates will have a leg up; consider this an intermediate step between Jane Louise Curry’s Robin Hood in the Green Wood (1995) and novel-length treatments, from Robin McKinley’s Outlaws of Sherwood (1988) to Michael Cadnum’s In a Dark Wood (1998). (Short stories. 10-13)