The Clever Little Tailor by Solomon Simon
Solomon Simon’s The Clever Little Tailor follows the adventures of a brave tailor who solves mysteries and overcomes great obstacles, thanks to his keen wit. This charming novel, deeply rooted in Eastern-European Jewish folkways and humor, is now accessible to the wider public for the first time through an English translation by David Forman. The bilingual text appears alongside stunning illustrations by Yehuda Blum.
Solomon Simon (Author): Born in Belarus in 1895, Simon came to the US as a teenager. After serving in the US Army in World War I, he began a career as a dentist. Simon was a prolific writer, publishing 20 full-length Yiddish books and scores of articles and essays. His work ranged from biblical exegesis to folk stories, from autobiography to commentary on modern Jewish life and identity. A dedicated educator, Simon served as the director of a Sholem Aleichem Folkshul, taught Bible study groups, and was the president of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute. He was also an editor of the organization’s children’s magazine, the Kinder Zhurnal, where The Clever Little Tailor first appeared as a serial. Simon is best remembered as a children’s author; his treatment of the Chelm stories in Yiddish (Di Heldn fun Khelm) and in English (The Wise Men of Helm and their Merry Tales; More Wise Men of Helm) brought these stories into the homes of generations of American Jewish children. The Rabbi’s Bible, his abridged version of the Hebrew Bible with commentaries for children, was widely used in Sunday schools for a half century. Simon died in 1970.
David R. Forman (Translator): The grandson of Yiddish author Solomon Simon, Dr. Forman was first a calligrapher and graphic artist, then a psychology researcher and college professor, before finally returning to his early love of writing. His poetry has been published online, in anthologies, and in literary journals such as Cimarron Review. Dr. Forman began studying Yiddish in his fifties to fulfill a lifelong vow to read and translate his grandfather’s work. He lives in Ithaca, NY, where he teaches a beginning Yiddish class at Cornell and catalogs Yiddish manuscripts for Cornell University Library.
Yehuda Blum (Illustrator): A freelance illustrator, Mr. Blum was the staff illustrator at the Yiddish Forward from 2015-2019, where his diverse artistic styles gave the paper its distinctive look. Blum is a fluent Yiddish speaker who is continuing the family tradition of working in Yiddish publishing; his grandfather was a typesetter for the Yiddish Forward.
Emil and Karl by Jacob Glatstein
Jacob Glatstein’s unforgettable Holocaust novel Emil and Karl is an exciting and heart-wrenching story of two friends – one Jewish, one Christian – who must find safety on the streets of Vienna in the dark days after Kristallnacht. The English translation, by Jeffrey Shandler, will appear for the first time alongside Glatstein’s original text, in agreement with Square Fish Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers. The volume will include entrancing illustrations by Yehuda Blum, based on photographs taken in Vienna in the fall of 1938.
Jacob Glatstein (Author): One of the foremost Yiddish writers of the twentieth century, Jacob Glatstein was born in Lublin in 1896 and immigrated to New York in 1914. Glatstein is best known as a modernist poet. A co-founder in 1920 of the Inzikhistn (Introspectivists), a group of avant-garde American Yiddish writers, he published thirteen books of poetry during his career. In addition, Glatstein was renowned as a literary and cultural critic and as the author of two novels for adults, inspired by his journey back to Poland in the mid-1930s. During World War II and continuing until his death in 1971, Glatstein was a leading figure in Yiddish literary responses to the Holocaust. Emil and Karl, his only novel for young readers, was among his very first efforts to address Jewish persecution in Nazi-occupied Europe. Published in New York in 1940, it is the earliest novel for young readers on this subject in any language.
Jeffrey Shandler (Translator): A professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, Dr. Shandler is the author of Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture , Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History, and Yiddish: Biography of a Language (forthcoming), among other titles. His edited volumes include Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust and Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory.
Yehuda Blum (Illustrator): A freelance illustrator, Mr. Blum was the staff illustrator at the Yiddish Forward from 2015-2019, where his diverse artistic styles gave the paper its distinctive look. Blum is a fluent Yiddish speaker who is continuing the family tradition of working in Yiddish publishing; his grandfather was a typesetter for the Yiddish Forward.
Uh-oh! by Jenny Kjærbo
Order in English. Order in Yiddish.
Uh-oh! (in Yiddish: Gevald!) tells the story of a wayward young puffin who has a series of misadventures when he is left in charge of his baby brother’s egg. Translated into English by Jordan Kutzik and into Yiddish by Arun Viswanath, this charming metaphor for a child learning to accept a younger sibling will delight readers young and old. Featuring Kjærbo’s delightful illustrations, Kinder-Loshn Publication is proud to be bringing this Faroese book to a wider audience in Yiddish and English.
Jenny Kjærbo (Author/Illustrator): Raised on the island of Suðuroy in the Faroe Islands, Kjærbo is a graphic designer based in Copenhagen. Her children’s books have appeared in Faroese, Danish, Hungarian, and Spanish.
Arun “Arele” Schaechter Viswanath (Yiddish Translator): A polyglot scion of a prominent family of Yiddish cultural activists, Viswanath is also the Yiddish translator of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.