The Butter Man [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Letts (Author), Ali Alalou (Author), Julie Klear Essakalli (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2008 | Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up

While Nora waits impatiently for dinner, her father stirs up a story from his childhood. During a famine Nora's grandfather must travel over the mountain to find work so he can provide food for his family. While young Ali waits for his father's return, he learns a lesson of patience, perseverance, and hope. Fold-art illustrations capture the Moroccan culture and landscape. A Junior Library Guild selection.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Every Saturday night, Nora watches her Moroccan-born baba (father) prepare a couscous meal in a special pot that he carried with him to the U.S. in his suitcase. One evening, Baba shares a story about how he coped with a famine during his childhood, spent in the mountains of Morocco. The authors, a married couple who drew on Ali’s personal experience, write in descriptive language that speaks directly to children. Baba says that hunger, for example, feels like “a little mouse gnawing on my insides.” The folk-art paintings, created by a textile designer, feature whimsical characters and cozy domestic scenes, while the ochre, gold, and rust palette evokes the feeling of the dusty, sunlit landscape. An authors’ note adds cultural context, and an appended glossary defines the Berber words used in the text. This warm family story about a rarely viewed culture will have particular appeal among children of immigrants, who, like Nora, wonder about their parents’ mysterious, former lives in another land. Grades K-3. --Gillian Engberg

About the Author

Elizabeth Alalou is a writer and Ali Alalou teaches French and applied linguistics at the University of Delaware. They live near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing (January 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580891276
• ISBN-13: 978-1580891271
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 9.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #869,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children, August 15, 2008

By 

Yana V. Rodgers "econkids.rutgers.edu" (New Brunswick, NJ) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Butter Man (Hardcover)

Nora's family has a special Saturday afternoon ritual in which Nora keeps her father, Baba, company in the kitchen while he cooks a savory Moroccan dish of couscous, meat, and vegetables. While they wait for her mother to come home from work, and as the tantalizing smells fill the kitchen, Nora feels increasingly hungry and complains to Baba that she is starving.

But Baba knows what it really feels like to slowly starve. He recounts to Nora a story from his youth in a mountain village of Morocco when a famine left him no more than a little bit of hard crusty bread to eat every day, and the jar of butter in which he liked to dip the bread had gone empty. Wanting to distract him from his hunger pangs, Baba's mother sent him outside to sit along the dirt road and wait for the butter peddler to come along. The butter man never did come, but watching the passers-by served as a necessary diversion until the day his father returned home from across the mountains with a sack of flour and a basket of food.

This outstanding book has much to offer with its powerful lesson about famine and hunger, the introduction of Moroccan culture and vocabulary, and the dramatic folk-art illustrations. The Butter Man communicates in a sensitive and careful way what it may feel like to experience extreme scarcity and how a particular family gets through the difficult time. Readers will appreciate how this important lesson is woven into an engrossing story with a unique international context.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We Love This Book!, June 22, 2008

By 

AS King (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Butter Man (Hardcover)

I bought this for my five-year-old daughter and she loves it. For us, it was not only a clever story, but the start of an education about Morocco. We have also talked a lot about world hunger (and helping people in need) since reading it, which I think is great. The story of Ali & the Butter Man is now a family favorite.