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By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( Z ) -> Zemach, Margot
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
But this book couldn't be any better 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.
A great great story. The ultimate example of hitting yourself in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop. In this retelling of a classic Yiddish tale, the poor protagonist visits the local Rabbi with a complaint. His house is too crowded and family members are constantly getting in one another's way. As the Rabbi instructs the man to add more and more animals to his hut, the scene within turns from mildly disruptive to one of complete and utter pandemonium. When the Rabbi at last tells the man to release all his farm animals from the hut, the man is delighted to find himself living a state of complete and utter peacefulness. The fact that he cannot distinguish that what he has now is exactly what he started with his driven home by the Rabbi's side-ways roll of the eyes in the book's final picture. The advantages of this book are many. For one thing, this is a story with a lesson that children will get. As a kid, I was read this book fairly regularly. It wasn't one of my favorite stories, but I liked the ways in which Zemach displayed chaos incarnate. At the end, I sided completely with the fed-up Rabbi. Why couldn't this man see that everything was as it was? And yet, the moral was comprehensible as well. As the title says, nothing is so bad that a little effort couldn't make it even worse.
The illustrations in this book are especially impressive. Set in a small village in what looks to be Russia, the inhabitants of this story fuss, fight, and attempt to do the daily chores inherent in their lives. The mother cooks, the kids squabble, the grandmother brushes hair, and all this is done amidst charging goats, squawking chickens and howling cats. There's a real sense of action and movement in this watercolors, as well as an appreciation for the source of the original tale. A must-have for any collection of folklore, Jewish or otherwise.
Editorial Review:
Once upon a time a poor unfortunate man lived with his mother, his wife, and his six children in a one-room hut.Because they were so crowded, the children often fought and the man and his wife argued. When the poor man was unable to stand it any longer, he ran to the Rabbi for help.As he follows the Rabbi's unlikely advice, the poor man's life goes from bad to worse, with increasingly uproarious results. In his little hut, silly calamity follows foolish catastrophe, all memorably depicted in full-color illustrations that are both funnier and lovelier than any this distinguished artist has done in the past.
