Adventures Of Hershel Of Ostropol

Adventures of Hershel of Ostropol

From BooklistAges 5^-9. "It's no disgrace to be poor, but it's no great honor either." Funny and humane, Kimmel's 10 Yiddish folktales about the trickster Hershel are rooted in the shtetl village community of the nineteenth-century Ukraine. Kimmel says that Hershel was a real character, a wandering beggar, who endeared himself to the common folk by making the pompous and arrogant look foolish. The joy and wit of these stories never denies the daily struggle with poverty and homelessness ("Times were bad. Hershel's family was starving" ). As in the Caldecott Honor Book Hershel and the Hannukah Goblins (1989), Hyman's wild, beautifully detailed drawings (in black-and-white above the title of each story, in riotous color on the jacket) capture Hershel's farcical interchange with the village creatures and characters, including the miser, the bandit, and the rabbi. With their wry idiom, these are stories for telling across generations. Kimmel points out that--like Coyote, Anansi, and B'rer Rabbit--this trickster belongs to all of us. Hazel RochmanDescribes the life and experiences of wandering storyteller Hershel of Ostropol, who lived in what is now the Ukraine during the first part of the nineteenth century, and relates ten of his endearing stories.From School Library JournalGrade 5-9?Ten superbly retold Hershel of Ostropol tales, many of which are unavailable in popular collections. In "What Hershel's Father Did," Kimmel resurrects Hershel's reputation from that presented in Jacqueline D. Greene's What His Father Did (Houghton, 1992). "Money from a Table" and "The Candlesticks" are variations on a similar scheme: taking advantage of a miser's greed. "Potatoes!" is similar to Vicky Shiefman's Sunday Potatoes, Monday Potatoes (S.&S, 1994); but where that version is sweet, Kimmel's is ironic. The funniest tale by far is "The Miracle," a commentary on the misplaced values of a community that has money to pay for a burial, but not for keeping a starving family alive. "An Incredible Story" and "The Cow" play out the tricky relationships between the Jews of Eastern Europe and their Christian neighbors, both nobles and peasants alike. "The Cow" is similar to Isaac Bashevis Singer's story of the goat that didn't give milk. A black-and-white vignette adorns each selection. The book closes with more of Hershel's sayings, redolent with Yiddish humor.?Marcia W. Posner, Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center of Nassau County, Glen Cove, NYCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.