SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

When Joseph is born, his grandfather fashions a beautiful blue blanket embroidered with stars. It's a favorite possession, but, of course, as the boy gets older it becomes worn. Grandpa snips and sews and makes a jacket from the fabric—which eventually Joseph outgrows. Later the material becomes a vest, a tie, and a button that's ultimately lost—a sequence the schoolboy Joseph spins into a story to read to his family, proving that it's possible to make ``something from nothing.'' This unsourced ``retelling of a traditional Jewish folktale'' is splendidly illustrated with hearty scenes of village life. In several of the glowing paintings, meticulously detailed cutaway views of the family's living quarters and Grandpa's tailor shop show the passage of years in other ways, realistic and fanciful: the birth of a baby; the outfitting of mouse family's home, under the floor, with scraps from Joseph's blanket. Nice. (Folklore/Picture book. 5-11)