Some children will demand a more traditional ending, but readers with a contemplative nature—or at least a sense of...
This Israeli import may set a new record for delayed gratification.
For a little while, the book feels like a story with no ending: In ancient Jerusalem, a tailor is mending a robe for the High Priest. His son, Itamar, notices that the robe is missing a bell on its hem and searches for it all over the city, but he never finds it. That seems like the place where the story has to end. A bell from Biblical times can never be replaced. But the final page of the book introduces a young archaeologist who, in 2011, spots something “gleaming in the dirt in an ancient drainage ditch.” Some readers will be frustrated by the delayed ending. It takes the resolution completely out of Itamar’s hands. But Itamar seems more bemused than distraught. The closing pages of the story show him as a gray-haired man, telling his children about the bell that was “lost and never found.” Philosophical readers may take this as an important lesson: Don’t hold on too tightly to the things you’ve lost. And the illustrations are extraordinary. Abolafia has simplified the characters’ anatomy to a few basic, lovely strokes of the pen, and he’s chosen a remarkable variety of browns to represent the range of people in the Middle East.
Some children will demand a more traditional ending, but readers with a contemplative nature—or at least a sense of humor—will be more than satisfied. (Picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-2612-9
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
An original tale takes readers to that nexus of foolishness, the village of Chelm. Shlomo and Rivka have “five children, twelve scrawny hens, one rooster and not much money.” So they use simple logic: A cow gives milk because she eats grass, so if they feed grass to their hens, the hens will give milk. This is, of course, a Chelm story. Chelm, for those who don’t know, is a village from Jewish folktales, populated by the most foolish people in the world. Stuchner is completely at home with the almost-logic of Chelm. (It may seem paradoxical to write a new traditional folktale, but it's very much in the spirit of Chelm.) As in the best of the traditional stories, every step of the villagers’ thought process makes perfect sense. Readers might even find themselves thinking, “Why shouldn’t hens give milk? It’s only fair.” Children will have a great time looking for the flaw in the argument. There are a few lulls, but Stuchner carries the gag through to a very amusing last page, in which Shlomo imagines a goat trying to hatch an enormous egg. Weissman’s illustrations help to sell the joke: The goat just looks so content up there on top of her egg. The story is so successful in making the absurd seem obvious that readers may wonder why they didn’t think of it themselves. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55469-319-1
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
The narratives are bland, the figures and locales in the art generic—but Muslim and non-Muslim children alike may find the...
In three teaching tales originally written in Turkish, a golden bird affords each of a trio of modern Muslim children dream glimpses of a different “Prophet.”
Answering young Shakir’s prayer to see Muhammad, the bird carries him to the radiant house of Muhammad’s birth, to the hills where “Halima suckled and cared for him,” over the Ka’ba and on to Medina. There, the Prophet, his face “bright like the moon” (but not directly seen in the naïve-style cartoon illustration), is “helping his friends build Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the Prophet’s Mosque.” The dream ends atop the “Mountain of Light,” where the Qur’an was revealed. Subsequently, Marwa is vouchsafed views of Isa (the baby Jesus), who proclaims, “Without a doubt, I am a servant of Allah. Allah gave me a book and made me a Prophet. He ordered me to be kind to my mother.” Marwa and readers then see him grow up to feed the hungry (with loaves and what looks like squab rather than fishes) and heal a blind man. In the final story, Umar sees Musa (Moses) abandoned on the Nile, rescued, “chosen as a Prophet,” given the “Holy Book Tawrat (Torah)” atop an unnamed mountain and parting the sea, “by the permission of Allah.”
The narratives are bland, the figures and locales in the art generic—but Muslim and non-Muslim children alike may find the perspective illuminating. (Picture book/religion. 5-8)Pub Date: April 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59784-282-2
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Tughra Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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