Picture of author.

Steve Sanfield (1937–2015)

Autor(a) de Bit by Bit

20+ Works 398 Membros 14 Críticas

About the Author

Includes the name: Steve Sanfield

Obras por Steve Sanfield

Associated Works

Tree 4: Winter 1974 — Contribuidor — 2 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1937-08-03
Data de falecimento
2015-01-28
Sexo
male

Membros

Críticas

A sampling:
* carrying logs back up a hill so that they can roll them down (p. 6)

* (Arithmetic): The rabbi reassures a young man married for 3 months, whose wife has just had a baby, that
- he has lived with her for 3 months,
- she has lived with him for 3 months,
- they have lived with each other for 3 months,
-and 3 + 3 + 3 = 9, the number of months it takes to have a baby. (pp. 18-19)

* Q: Is it the sugar or the stirring that makes tea sweet?
A: The stirring: "you add the sugar so you'll know how long to stir the tea." (p. 22)

* the man in a wagon who carried his heavy bundle in his arms rather than put it into the wagon so that he wouldn't burden the horse pulling the wagon (p. 45)

* when circus people call Pinkhes terrible names, he gets back at them by buying a ticket and not using it (p. 46)

* A shammes tells Pinkhes a riddle: "Who am I? I am my father's son, but I am not my brother." and explains that the answer is, "It's me!" When Pinkhes shares the riddle with his friends, he says the answer is, "The Shammes!" (p. 47-48)

* A Chelmite, who teaches in a nearby town, only comes home on Pesach because every Chanukah (nine months later), his wife has a baby; jus imagine how may children he would have if he came home every week! (p. 52)
* He sends his wife a letter about slippers: "...I want you to send me your slippers. I say your slippers instead of my slippers, because if I said my slippers, you would read my slippers and send me your slippers, . . . ." (pp. 52-3)

* To prevent the shammes from disturbing the snow, he stands on a table carried by four men around the town. (p. 58)

* To help the shammes, who must bang on every house's shutters to call people to services, all the shutters are stored in the synagogue courtyard. (p. 59)

* a brilliant plan to sell holes for bagels fails when no source can be found for the holes (p. 61)

* (Arithmetic): Why 7 + 7 = 11:
Raisela had 4 children before her first husband died.
Reuven also had 4 children before his first wife died.
After Raisela and Reuven married, they had 3 children.
So,
- Raisela has 4 + 3 = 7 children of her own,
- Reuven has 4 + 3 = 7 children of his own,
- and together they have 11 children.
Hence, (4 + 3) + (4 + 3) = 7 + 7 = 11. (pp. 72-73)

* A riddle:
Q: What's green and whistles and hangs on the wall?
A: A herring!
If you were to say that a herring isn't green, why, you could paint it green.
And if you were to say that a herring doesn't hang on a wall, why, you could hang it there.
And, if, finally, you were to complain that herrings don't whistle, simply explain that you added that just to make the riddle hard. (p. 79-80)?

Q: Which is more important, the sun or the moon?
A: The moon. "The moon shines at night when we need the light most, whereas the sun shines during the day when we already have plenty of light." (p. 90)

* When the town's only wheelmaker commits a capital offense, it is decreed that, in order for justice to be done, a cobbler must hang for the crime since there are plenty of cobblers in Chelm. (p. 92-3)

As you might see from the page numbers, there are plenty of other stories in this book about life in Chelm. The above are my favorites. These and more can be found in other books. For example, in Simon Boom gives a wedding, a picture book by Yuri Suhl, water is served at a wedding.

The author notes that Chelm is not the only place inhabited by fools. "Sometimes it's an individual like Jean Sot in France or Silly Jack in England. Sometimes it's an entire town of fools like Schildburg in Germany or Montieri in Italy. For Greeks it's Abdera; for the English, Gotham; and for the Jews it's Chelm." (p. 100)

Chelm is also a real town in Poland. "The first Jewish settlers had arrived there almost a thousand years ago. They came to work in the logging and lumber business . . . . Less than fifty years ago (1940) there were fifteen thousand Jews living in Chelm, almost half of the population, but today, among its seventy thousand inhabitants, there are none, absolutely none. They have all disappeared. Most were brutally murdered at the killing camp called Sobibor, located only thirty miles to the northeast. The few that did survive have long ago moved on to new lives elsewhere." (p. 105)
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
raizel | 1 outra crítica | Apr 26, 2020 |
This picture book is about winters first snow and what happens on this young boys’ journey through the snow. Sanfield starts this story in the night before the world this child lives in was covered in snow. Each page has only three lines, leaving the illustration to tell the rest of the story. The illustrations are an important aspect in this story for the reason alone that they are the story, in a sense. By having limited words, we are forced to look at the pictures and interpret how the young boy goes about his snow day. From page to page, we learn what the boy sees throughout the day in winters first snow.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
cchaney | Mar 8, 2016 |
A retelling of the Yiddish song, Joseph Had an Overcoat, this time including milestones in the life of a tailor as he reuses what's left of a coat until there is nothing left but the story of the life of a tailor as he reuses . . . . This story is also done in Simms Taback's Joseph Had an Overcoat and Phoebe Gilman's Something from Nothing.
 
Assinalado
raizel | Jan 2, 2015 |
This book has been so different from any other I've seen. It is a crazy story about raising turtles to be sold to a restaurant. I'm happy that it ended with the turtles being set free. I would recommend this book to grades k-3.
 
Assinalado
Trock33 | 5 outras críticas | Nov 25, 2014 |

Prémios

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Susan Gaber Illustrator
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Estatísticas

Obras
20
Also by
1
Membros
398
Popularidade
#60,946
Avaliação
3.9
Críticas
14
ISBN
29

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