The Angel's Mistake: Stories of Chelm

Grade 1-3?Anecdotal episodes of life in the fabled village of Chelm are told in one and two sentence paragraphs using modern language that retains no Yiddish flavoring or inflection. What was a barrel of borsht in Solomon Simon's The Wise Men of Helm (Behrman, 1942) becomes a water barrel. The humorous ponderings and discussions of the village elders, so elemental to Eastern European Jewish life and so much a part of Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories, are nowhere in evidence. In fact, one is barely aware that these are Jewish stories beyond the author's note and the mention of the Grand Rabbi. The origin of the town is the connecting thread between the title and the beginning and end of the story, but by simplifying the tales to reach a picture-book audience, the details and descriptions of daily life are lost. There is a subtle difference between calling Chelmites fools and calling them stupid. Fools, as depicted by Simon and Singer, just can't seem to make a sensible decision even though their hearts are in the right place while stupid, as used so often in this book, connotes a lack of intelligence. The gouache paintings are colorful but too indistinct to establish a proper sense of place.?Susan Pine, New York Public Library
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The team behind Dybbuk (1996) have collaborated on a winsome story set in the legendary town of Chelm, charting its origins to the angel carrying a bag of ``stupid souls'' and mistakenly spilling them all in one town. Prose recounts many of the exploits in which ``the wise men and women . . . put their brilliant minds together and solve their problems.'' Whether it's going barefoot in the snow to keep their shoes from getting wet or wearing their hats upside down to keep them dry, the people of Chelm are full of ideas. A need to light up the night leads the townspeople to set a fire and to then call upon the firemen who smother the flames with logs. The town burns down and the fools of Chelm are disbursed, just as ``the angels had intended.'' Podwal's sly yet strikingly beautiful gouache and colored-pencil paintings, using impressionistic brush strokes and skewed perspectives to render the travails of the fools, are a perfect foil for Prose's understated, humorous narrative. Families will find this is a savory treat for sharing. (Picture book. 5-9) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.