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Joseph, more about illustrations and references
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From: drabkin <arcanis>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 07:40:33 -0800
Melody, this is going to be sketchy because I'm at home and the book's on my desk at work so I'm relying on my memory. I think the little collaged bits might be ignored by a child, but they wouldn't be a distraction. To me, as an adult reader, they're very interesting because I'm bringing my own background to them; to most adult readers they would be something to be noted, probably, or maybe as you say a distraction. Those collaged bits refer to Jewish jokes, Chelm tales, there are little references to satirical stories about wonder-working rabbis, Yehupetz (the place-reference used to signify "at the ends of the earth", or "so far away we can write it off"), little proverbs which are really authentic Yiddish proverbs (I noticed my grandma's favourite,
"when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick"). One double-page spread shows a Men's Chorus, which was a staple feature of immigrant Jewish life in America, complete with sheet music showing the folk song they're singing. There's a playbill for a play featuring Maurice Schwartz, the one of the truly great figures in Yiddish theatre in America. There are envelopes with letters, small photographs with Jewish faces and names, looking just like faces from my family album and like faces from the family albums of all of us who count that immigrant past as our own past.
So there are echoes and reminders in those little details, that I found very enriching, building up a picture of a world of Yiddishkeit that now exists only in memory. This all exists inside another picture, the folk-art liveliness of a village depicted as more colorful, less muddy, more clean and optimistic than any such village life ever was in reality, the village of a child's imagination, or maybe, of an immigrant's wistful memory. So that's why I said
"levels", because to my perception, there was a picture inside a picture, a kind of inside joke as it were.
But to return to specifics of your question, there isn't another story line that I could see, unless the discrepancy between the immigrant-life little references, and the European village life of the main pictures, provides a kind of story in itself.
Marian Drabkin Richmond Public Library Richmond, CA
Received on Fri 28 Jan 2000 09:40:33 AM CST
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 07:40:33 -0800
Melody, this is going to be sketchy because I'm at home and the book's on my desk at work so I'm relying on my memory. I think the little collaged bits might be ignored by a child, but they wouldn't be a distraction. To me, as an adult reader, they're very interesting because I'm bringing my own background to them; to most adult readers they would be something to be noted, probably, or maybe as you say a distraction. Those collaged bits refer to Jewish jokes, Chelm tales, there are little references to satirical stories about wonder-working rabbis, Yehupetz (the place-reference used to signify "at the ends of the earth", or "so far away we can write it off"), little proverbs which are really authentic Yiddish proverbs (I noticed my grandma's favourite,
"when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick"). One double-page spread shows a Men's Chorus, which was a staple feature of immigrant Jewish life in America, complete with sheet music showing the folk song they're singing. There's a playbill for a play featuring Maurice Schwartz, the one of the truly great figures in Yiddish theatre in America. There are envelopes with letters, small photographs with Jewish faces and names, looking just like faces from my family album and like faces from the family albums of all of us who count that immigrant past as our own past.
So there are echoes and reminders in those little details, that I found very enriching, building up a picture of a world of Yiddishkeit that now exists only in memory. This all exists inside another picture, the folk-art liveliness of a village depicted as more colorful, less muddy, more clean and optimistic than any such village life ever was in reality, the village of a child's imagination, or maybe, of an immigrant's wistful memory. So that's why I said
"levels", because to my perception, there was a picture inside a picture, a kind of inside joke as it were.
But to return to specifics of your question, there isn't another story line that I could see, unless the discrepancy between the immigrant-life little references, and the European village life of the main pictures, provides a kind of story in itself.
Marian Drabkin Richmond Public Library Richmond, CA
Received on Fri 28 Jan 2000 09:40:33 AM CST
