Shlemiel Crooks - Hardcover

Anna Olswanger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 158838165X ISBN 13: 9781588381651

Publisher: NewSouth Books, 2005

Synopsis

A modern-day parable written in Yiddish-inflected English uses the story of two crooks who set out to rob the St. Louis saloon of Reb Elias Olschwanger as a metaphor for the first Passover.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"In the middle of the night on a Thursday, two crooks—onions should grow in their navels—drove their horse and wagon to the saloon of Reb Elias Olschwanger, at the corner of 14th and Carr streets in St. Louis. This didn’t happen yesterday. It was 1919." So begins Anna Olswanger’s charming folktale Shlemiel Crooks, the story of Reb Elias and the thieves who try to steal his Passover wine.

Based on a true story, Shlemiel is an imaginative introduction for young children to the history of Passover, as Pharaoh and a town of Jewish immigrants play tug-of-war with wine made from grapes left over from the exodus from Egypt.

A modern-day parable, Shlemiel has a music all its own. No other children’s book has Pharaoh’s ghost coming back to "pull one over on the Jews," nosy neighbors making a "shtuss" outside, and a talking horse that sounds like it has a "little indigestion." In its Yiddish-inflected English, punctuated by amusing curses, young readers hear the language of a Jewish community of another time, while delighting to brilliant illustrations on every page.

About the Author:

Author Anna Olswanger grew up in Memphis, and now lives in New Jersey, where she helps New York-area Holocaust survivors write about their experiences. She teaches writing for the Center for Training and Education at Johns Hopkins University and Stony Brook University Medical School.Illustrator Paula Goodman Koz was born in Peru, and grew up in Philadelphia, the West Indies, Central America, Pittsburgh, and Riverdale, New York. She settled in Manhattan and enrolled in a printmaking program at the National Academy of Design where Hans Jelinek introduced her to woodcut. She also studied at the New School, and has been a freelance illustrator in New York. She lives in Virginia, with her husband Gabe, daughter Nadia and son Daniel.

About this edition

• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 158838165X
• ISBN 13: 9781588381651
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 36
• Illustrator: Paula Goodman Koz