Customer Reviews

The Angel's Mistake: Stories of Chelm

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My daughter (age 8) loves this book. It's one of her favorite read-alouds, and it's easy enough for her to read by herself. It is based on an old Jewish folk tale about a town in Eastern Europe where the people are incredibly stupid. The kids think it's hilarious.

I always thought Chelm stories were for older children and adults but Francine Prose has proven me wrong.

In this 21-page rendition of Chelm, that mythic town in Eastern Europe where all the people were fools, she introduces their most classic foibles.

When the man who woke the people every morning for prayers got too old to walk from house to house, they took their doors off the hinges and carried them to him so he could knock without leaving his yard. The people went barefoot in the snow so their shoes wouldn't get wet. They wore their hats upside down when it rained to keep them dry.

They built their new synogogue without a roof so their prayers could rise to heaven. They tried to move the mountain to remove their town from shadow. They tried to catch the moon and store it in a barrel. And when a fire broke out, they threw on logs to smother it. Needless to say, it burned higher.

This book has none of the character development or pithy dialogue of other Chelm volumes, but Mark Podwal's illustrations more than make up, in pictures, for the hallmark word-play of Chelm.

The Angel's Mistake is a wonderful well written book full of stories great for reading aloud for an entire family. Please check out Francine Prose and Mark Podwal's other books. Angel's Mistake is so good the Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles selected it to be read by actress Joanna Gleason for the Library public radio production and CD,"One People, Many Stories: Jewish Stories from Around the World."

My boys LOVE this book and giggle every time we read it. They are 4 and 3 and get most of the jokes.

However, some of the "jokes" seem a bit meanspirited to me althoug the ending of the book makes up for it. So I give it 4 instead of 5 stars.