Trust the story. Start out, always, letting kids read the entire story. Don't break it up into lessons. Yolen gave the example of a teacher using her book Owl Moon to teach figurative language devices. They fall in love with the language.
Teachers are afraid.
They're not letting children fall through the words into the story. They're stopping them at the level of the words. Yolen isn't the only author who sees the death of literature through basilization. And new educational reforms without supporting intensive staff development may force teachers to either accept district adoptions or dig deeper into their own basilized renditions of popular children's books. Students will get more of the same.