Honey on the Page - A Great Book Launch

 October 6, 2020  was launch date for the first-ever anthology of Yiddish stories for children, Honey on the Page,* translated and edited by Miriam Udel with illustrations by Paula Cohen. In honor of the launch for the book, which was published by NYU Press, PJ Library sponsored a Zoom program.

Professor Udel, an Associate Professor at Emory University, must be a phenomenal teacher; she was certainly a dynamic yet approachable speaker, even with the limitations of Zoom. She did not grow up in a Yiddish-speaking  home, but around 2013 she attended a Yiddish language program at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. She discovered that the center had a list of approximately one thousand Yiddish children’s books and stories. After thinking, “Someone should do someone with all this material,” she decided to be that someone.

At 352 pages, this book is much more than a collection of stories: it is a window onto Jewish life and thought on four continents from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Many European authors wrote during the vibrant years of the 1920s and 1930s, but perished in the Holocaust; others lived in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and other countries in addition to the USA. The age range for readers is from preschool through young adult.  The stories reflect the many nations in which they were written as well as their shared Jewish culture. 

Artist Paula Cohen illustrated the stories and drew the cover illustration. Because NYU Press, a university press, does not usually work with illustrators and never with color illustrations, the pictures are black and white. But unlike today’s spare cartoony illustrations, these are filled with strong details including uniquely Jewish ones like mezuzahs on doorposts or kiddush cups on a shelf in a story that does not mention Shabbat or kiddush.

This is a book for parents to read with their children, more than for children to read alone—it is too big, has stories for too many age groups, and has too few illustrations for young children to manage by themselves. But it sounds like a real winner for families. 

Thanks, PJ Library, for making this Zoom meeting possible, and thanks to Miriam Udel and Paula Cohen for sharing their joy, energy, and thoughts on this great book.

* “When a three-year-old child starts learning Torah in cheder (school) for the first time, it is customary to place a little honey on the letters of the alef-bet, which the child then licks happily, so the child learns to associate Torah with delight and good taste.”—https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2697265/jewish/Honey-in-Jewish-Law-Lore-Tradition-and-More.htm