Something from Nothing
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Joseph's grandfather transforms his blanket many times over the years, but what can be done when the final item is lost? Gilman's version of this Yiddish folk tale won the 1993 Ruth Schwartz Award.When Joseph was a baby, his grandfather made him a wonderful blanket. But as Joseph grows older, the blanket becomes tattered and worn. Throw it out! cries Joseph's mother. Luckily, Grandpa is an extraordinary tailor. He can fix anything! And so with a snip! snip! here, and a few stitches there, Grandpa transforms the treasured blanket into a jacket, a vest, a Sabbath tie, a handkerchief, and finally a beautiful button. But when the button is lost, even Grandpa can't help. After all, how can you make something from nothing?In a rich and loving portrait of shtetl life, Phoebe Gilman presents a traditional Jewish folktale about family love and ingenuity that will warm the hearts of readers young and old.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Joseph was a baby, his grandfather made him a shimmering blue blanket adorned with the moon and stars. As the boy grows and the blanket wears out, the old tailor recycles it, in succession fashioning a jacket, a vest, a tie and, finally, a cloth-covered button. But when Joseph loses the button, even his grandfather cannot make something from nothing. With its judicious repetition and internal rhymes, this thoughtfully presented Jewish folktale will captivate readers right through the ending, in which the boy discovers one last incarnation for his beloved keepsake. Although her renderings of human faces border on cartoonishness, Gilman's ( The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs ) oil-glazed tempera paintings suggest the vivid world of Joseph's shtetl, with full-page cutaway illustrations recording the multileveled activity in Joseph's house. In an imaginative visual stroke, the bottom of each spread features the beneath-the-floorboards doings of a family of mice whose domestic life--from new births to Sabbath dinners to the outfitting of their entire home in discarded swatches of the blue blanket--winsomely mirrors Joseph's own. Ages 5-11.
