Taback, Simms. Joseph Had a Little Overcoat. New York: Scholastic, 2000. Print.
Summary
Joseph, a Jewish man living in early 20th century Poland, notices that his overcoat is getting worn, so he uses the material and makes a vest. When the vest gets worn, he takes that and makes a scarf. When that gets worn... find out for yourself!
My Impressions
My first impression when I opened the book was "The book is damaged!" Then I realized it was just part of the story; the overcoat becomes a vest through specially cut holes in the pages. This is just one example of the cleverness that went into this book. If you don't take time to check out the illustrations in this Caldecott winner, you'll be missing half of the fun. Taback adds little details to each page through his drawings as well as some photographs. The story itself, based on an old Yiddish folk song, is simple and memorable for any little kid. It's definitely one to enjoy over and over.
What Other Reviewers Said
As in his Caldecott Honor book, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, Taback's inventive use of die-cut pages shows off his signature artwork, here newly created for his 1977 adaptation of a Yiddish folk song. This diverting, sequential story unravels as swiftly as the threads of Joseph's well-loved, patch-covered plaid coat. A flip of the page allows children to peek through to subsequent spreads as Joseph's tailoring produces items of decreasing size. The author puts a droll spin on his narrative when Joseph loses the last remnant of the coat button and decides to make a book about it. "Which shows... you can always make something out of nothing," writes Taback, who wryly slips himself into his story by depicting Joseph creating a dummy for the book that readers are holding. Still, it's the bustling mixed-media artwork, highlighted by the strategically placed die-cuts, that steals the show. Taback works into his folk art a menagerie of wide-eyed animals witnessing the overcoat's transformation, miniature photographs superimposed on paintings and some clever asides reproduced in small print (a wall hanging declares, "Better to have an ugly patch than a beautiful hole"; a newspaper headline announces, "Fiddler on Roof Falls off Roof"). With its effective repetition and an abundance of visual humor, this is tailor-made for reading aloud. All ages. (1)
"Joseph had a little overcoat. It was old and worn. So he made a jacket out of it and went to the fair." So begins this adaptation of a Yiddish folk song (a newly illustrated version of a book Taback first did in 1977). The text is simple to the point of prosaicness — nowhere near as inventive and jazzy as the illustrator's riff on There Was an Old lady Who Swallowed a Fly — but the art sings with color and movement and humor and personality. Taback employs die-cuts with the same effectiveness and cleverness as he did in There Was an Old Lady to tell the story of resourceful Joseph, a farmer/tailor of Yehupetz, Poland, who recycles his worn overcoat into ever-smaller elements (jacket, vest, scarf, tie, handkerchief, and button). Taback incorporates detail after detail of Jewish life — the Yiddish newspaper the Morning Freiheit; references to Sholom Aleichem and other writers and philosophers; Yiddish proverbs and Chelm stories — to create a veritable pageant of pre-WWII Jewish-Polish life. (In fact, the book is as much a tribute to a vanished way of life as it is a story, but the tribute only enriches the tale.) Broad comedy plays an important part of the pageant: Joseph looks so unhappy and gets such expressively reproachful looks from his animals when his garments become "old and worn"; in contrast, he is all smiles when, each time, he makes something new out of the old. (The exceptionally clever cover design — which incorporates die-cuts to show first a distressingly full-of-holes and then a jauntily patched overcoat — echoes this satisfying pattern.) Double-page spreads employ a mixture of painting and collage to somewhat surreal but delightful effect, such as the one in which Joseph is standing in a field covered with photographs of fruits and vegetables of every kind, from watermelons to jalapeno peppers. In the end, Joseph loses his button, his last bit of overcoat; left with nothing, he makes one more item — this book. Don't you lose it: clever, visually engrossing, poignant, it's worth holding on to. (2)
Suggested Activities
Have kids think of their own examples of things old and seemingly worthless that can be used again. They can make a book out of their own drawings or magazine clippings illustrating just how far they can go to make "something out of nothing."
Other Citations
(1) Rev. of "Joseph Had a Little Overcoat." Publisher's Weekly. "Amazon.com: Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (Caldecott Medal Book) (9780670878550): Simms Taback: Books." Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & More. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. <http://tinyurl.com/2a4lj8e>.
(2) Parravano, Martha V. "Joseph Had a Little Overcoat." Horn Book Magazine 76.1 (2000): 68-69. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.
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